


The Only True Lords

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bonding, Gen, Hogwarts, Lordship, Loyalty, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-08 14:51:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 63
Words: 254,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Lords of Elfland are true lords, the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth: their lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness.”  Ursula K. Le Guin. Harry ends up accidentally bonding himself as Lord to several Slytherins after the Battle of Hogwarts, including Snape and Draco Malfoy. It’s a long journey from putting his foot in it all the time to at least <i>trying</i> to be a good one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Accidentally Yours

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes its title from the quote in the summary. I became interested in seeing if I could chronicle Harry's transformation into one of these Lords. This story will be long, but I don't know how long yet. The romance and the pace are going to be pretty slow.

  
Harry became aware of something wrong when he was dancing around the Great Hall with Voldemort, trying to keep his eyes on him and work out everything the Elder Wand would let him do, and what it _wouldn’t_ let him do. He really couldn’t afford to be distracted, and it wasn’t like he wanted to be.  
  
But it wasn’t every day that you thought you saw someone come back from the dead.  
  
Harry took a quick step sideways and turned his head before Voldemort could come around to keep up with him, and yes, there Snape was, his shoulders hunched and his wand moving as he stood in front of several Slytherin students. Harry saw Draco Malfoy there, and Pansy Parkinson—when had _she_ come back in?—and some others that stood too far back for him to recognize their faces. Harry had no idea what Snape was casting. Some sort of protection spell for students, he hoped, and not a curse that would make them all super-powerful and able to kill Harry with a single bite.  
  
Voldemort turned to see what he was looking at, and if Harry was surprised to see that Snape had survived Nagini’s bite, _he_ appeared stupefied. He stared from face to face, and when Snape turned and looked at him from under a curtain of dark hair, he lifted the Elder Wand.  
  
“I should have known,” he said, in a hissing whisper that Harry thought would crack the walls, and started to cast.  
  
Harry had no idea what it was, but it didn’t matter. If he was right about the Elder Wand and its allegiance to one master, it wouldn’t want to hurt Harry, but it would have absolutely no compunction about hurting anyone else.  
  
“ _No!_ ” Harry screamed, and sprinted forwards, towards the Slytherin table that Snape and the other students were standing in front of.  
  
There was too much ground to cover, and he wasn’t going to get there before the spell took effect, he thought as he ran. But he could do something else. He cast a Tripping Jinx at Voldemort’s legs, distracting him enough that he faltered in the chant. By the time he began again—never turning away from Snape, as though it was more important to punish him than to kill Harry, just _like_ the arrogant bastard—Harry had got between the Slytherins and Voldemort.  
  
Snape was snarling at Harry as he turned his back. Harry ignored him. Sure, Snape had been more decent than Harry knew and friends with his mum. He had still conspired with Dumbledore to make sure that Harry would march to his death. It wasn’t _Harry’s_ fault that they’d been wrong and he’d survived.  
  
Voldemort finished the spell with a single, long hiss. Harry couldn’t understand it, and he seriously doubted it was actually Parseltongue. He focused on the Elder Wand instead, that shook and trembled in Voldemort’s fist as if trying to tear itself free.  
  
Either it didn’t manage before the spell flew, or it didn’t care that much about not hitting Harry after all. The curse flew out, coiled and arched back on itself like a picture of a tapeworm that Harry had seen in a book last year, and bright blue and flashing yellow. The sight of it made Harry feel sick.  
  
 _What would happen if the Elder Wand tried to spare me but not Snape?_  
  
Harry raised a Shield Charm without thinking about it. It had to be huge, and curved back, bright and silver, to protect Snape and the Slytherin kids. That didn’t matter. He’d done it before the curse had time to hit.  
  
The curse collided with the shield. Harry saw it spark and fizzle, and thought for a long second that it would die down.  
  
Then the shield collapsed and blended with the curse. Harry saw the tapeworm-shape turn bright silver and rear up like a snake, but he didn’t have time to look at it further, because Voldemort had started casting something else, and Harry turned to face him and yelled, “ _EXPELLIARMUS!_ ” as loud as he could.  
  
The Elder Wand flew out of Voldemort’s hand, there was a look on his face that Harry had never seen before, and then an explosion of light and heat caught Harry around the legs. He cried out in spite of himself, because it was just a little pain and he’d had worse, but it was so _unexpected._ Like someone had splashed boiling oil on him.  
  
And the light was playing all around him, expanding outwards, and it hit Voldemort as the Elder Wand soared above him. Voldemort didn’t have time to run, and Harry wasn’t sure that he would have anyway. Probably wanted to stay there and make sure Harry was actually dead.  
  
 _Both of us are going to be disappointed,_ Harry thought, as Voldemort’s body flared white and black, the bones showing through his skin and his organs shivering as though someone was shaking them in place, and then he had to shut his eyes and go away for a while as the pain expanded until it was all the world.  
  
*  
  
“Wake _up_ , you stupid boy.”  
  
Harry blinked. He wasn’t dead?  
  
No, he wasn’t. Because he was sure, after his walk through the Forest with the Resurrection Stone, that he would have been with his mum and dad and Sirius and Remus, not lying there on the floor of the Great Hall with Snape bending over him. He could see the colors of sunset on the ceiling behind Snape’s head.  
  
Harry sat up slowly. His body felt strange, as though the pain was lingering in his legs and arms, ready to burst out again when he moved them. But he swung them easily enough, and he finally stood, braced against someone who turned out to be Ron. Harry hugged him, hard, with one arm around his shoulders. They hadn’t had time to do that since Voldemort came in with Hagrid carrying Harry and proclaimed him dead.  
  
Someone crashed into him from the other side and said into his ear, in a voice too deep for sadness, “ _Harry_.” And Harry hugged Hermione too, and turned to face the place where Voldemort had stood.  
  
He was pretty sure that for him to be alive, Voldemort had to be dead, but he still half-shuddered when he saw the pile of dust in the center of the Great Hall. It was sparkling grey, like a duller version of the color the spell had turned as the Shield Charm and Voldemort’s curse collided, and formed a person-shaped outline on the stone. Harry swallowed, feeling a little sick, and turned to look at Hermione.  
  
“What _happened_?” he asked her.  
  
“She is not the one who can tell you.”  
  
Snape’s voice was clipped. Harry turned to face him with all sorts of emotions jumping up and down in his chest. He could understand Snape a lot better—but he had nearly died—but Snape had survived—but Harry was just sick and tired of taking shit after he had _walked to his death_ —but Snape had been on their side all along. Maybe it would all right if he asked about the spell and nothing else.  
  
Snape stood there with his arms folded, staring at him. His face was grey. Harry assumed the Slytherin students must have died and looked around, but there was a huddled clump over against one wall that included Parkinson, Zabini, and Goyle, and Malfoy stood in his parents’ arms, a forlorn little triangle, by the benches of the Slytherin table. So Harry turned around and faced Snape with the knowledge that _something_ must have gone wrong, but at least he hadn’t killed anyone he didn’t intend to kill.  
  
“Do you know what you have done?” Snape whispered.  
  
Harry braced himself against his best friends’ arms, and shook his head. His muscles trembled a little, and he wanted to lie down, but he also wanted to hear about the latest disaster so he could deal with it, preferably _before_ he went to sleep the way he probably would any minute now. “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t have asked what happened. Sir,” he added, since it looked as though Snape might forget about that promise to his mum just because.  
  
Snape shut his eyes and turned away for a second. Harry looked at him. He didn’t see any burns on his shoulders, or ragged tearing of his robes, or even a bite or blood on the side of his neck where Nagini had attacked him. Harry sneered to himself. Snape didn’t look all that hurt, then—nothing to be upset about.  
  
“The Shield Charm combined with the curse that was meant to make me obedient to him and bind me as his slave,” Snape whispered. “He did not dark risk the Imperius Curse, not now that he must have known I could resist his mental probing with Occlumency.”  
  
Harry just nodded, not that Snape was looking at him. At least now he knew what the original curse had been for, and it made sense that Voldemort would cast it at Snape. He always did have more rage than sense. “All right. What happened when they combined?”  
  
Snape squeezed his eyes shut. Then he said, “You made the rest of us—the people you stood in front of, me and my students—your slaves.”  
  
“That’s impossible,” Harry said, after a second of startled silence. He could hear Hermione drawing her breath in, but it sounded like the sound she made when she was about to start a tirade, not a gasp of surprise, so he reckoned she didn’t agree with Snape. “That was what the original curse was supposed to do. How can the combination of the Shield Charm and the curse do the same thing? The Shield Charm would have changed it.”  
  
Snape swung back on him. He raised an eyebrow, maybe because Harry didn’t back away, but since Harry couldn’t back away at the moment without falling on his arse, he decided that was a stupid reason for Snape to be impressed.  
  
“Who knew?” Snape whispered. “You know some of the magical theory behind the combination of spells after all.”  
  
Harry just stared at him, and snorted. Snape was being _stupid._ He knew Harry had been good at Defense Against the Dark Arts, and that he’d survived the last year. He was delaying.  
  
Snape raised his hand as if he would fend Harry off, and then let it drop wearily back to his side. His face looked dusty. Perhaps, Harry thought, he would have started crying, but of course that wasn’t a good option here in the middle of the Great Hall, in front of all these people, with everyone staring at them.  
  
“The Shield Charm was a protection spell,” Snape went on, into what sounded like a spreading pool of silence. Harry grimaced a little. That was only happening because other people had stopped talking and were craning their necks. He wasn’t going to let Snape blame him for attracting attention _this_ time. He was the one who’d chosen to make an announcement like this. “The curse that the Dark Lord cast at me was meant to make him my Lord in truth. And you combined them both, and made yourself our lord.” He grimaced and turned away, so sharply that his hair swished across the air like a knife. “To defend us, to protect us, I suppose. Are you _happy,_ Potter?”  
  
“Like I knew he would do that,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Like I knew that you could resist it somehow.”  
  
Snape stiffened and stared at him over his shoulder. “I could not have resisted the curse.”  
  
“Then what’s the problem?” Harry tried to shift forwards a little, but his legs wobbled. No, he was definitely going to fall down without Ron and Hermione there. He knew he was breathing a little fast, he knew he probably didn’t sound normal, that he sounded stupid, but Snape was acting like Harry wanted to be—what? In charge of a bunch of Slytherins? He didn’t even know what being a Lord _meant_. “You’re alive. It’s better to be alive, and whatever I had to do to help you escape—”  
  
“I would rather be dead,” Snape said, every word carrying a hiss, “than the slave of a third master.”  
  
Harry nodded to the huddled Slytherins along the wall, and then at Malfoy. He had turned around in his parents’ arms and was watching, his eyes so wide that they looked like they would devour his face. “And what about them? Don’t they get a say in it? Would you rather be dead than—I don’t know, indebted to me?” he asked Parkinson. She had been the one who had said they should throw him to Voldemort, after all.  
  
Parkinson’s eyes were tearless as they focused on him, but Harry didn’t think that would endure for long. She shook her head. “You don’t know what this means,” she whispered, and turned her arm towards him.  
  
Harry thought for a second it was her left arm, and she was a Death Eater. Then he saw, from the way she stood, that it must have been the right one. And emblazoned on the skin next to her elbow was a bright shield, silver in the center, with a long, thin green line around it. Harry reckoned it might be a serpent if you squinted, but he was standing too far away, and his eyes were watering too much with tiredness, to see it properly.  
  
“I’ve marked you?” Harry could hear his voice changing as his emotions all slid away down a long tunnel. All right, he could see why this had upset them. Parkinson probably _hadn’t_ been a Death Eater. She’d escaped having the Dark Mark. And then Harry came along and did something else instead, and she wasn’t free after all.  
  
“Yes,” said Parkinson, and she pulled her arm back to her side and closed her eyes.  
  
“And me,” Snape said, and Harry had never heard such hatred in his voice. He flinched a little from it, and felt Hermione hug him closer from the side.  
  
“Well, okay,” Harry said, and swallowed. He wanted to go to sleep. He wanted to wake up and have this all be a dream. He had never thought he would go straight from killing Voldemort into some other problem. Didn’t the hero at least get a few days of rest first?  
  
But maybe because he wasn’t really a hero, just someone who had died and then survived because the Elder Wand didn’t want to hurt him, he didn’t get that option. He shook his head and straightened up instead. “Okay. What do I have to do? Is there any way to break this spell, or disguise the marks, or—” Something occurred to him, and he nearly knocked himself to the floor fumbling for his sleeve. Hermione was the one who pushed it down gently, and Ron was the one who pulled up the sleeve on the right arm, when Harry had been going for his left.  
  
 _God, I have Death Eaters on the brain,_ Harry thought, as he blinked and breathed and looked.  
  
The shield on his arm was much bigger, and when Harry touched it gingerly, the skin there felt almost metallic. On the points of the silver shield, which was five-sided, were five little green dots. Malfoy and Snape and Parkinson and Zabini and Goyle, Harry thought. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to run away.  
  
He wanted to do lots of things, but he took the time to notice that the serpent around the edges of his shield was as bright as poison, and then he turned back to Snape.  
  
“Is there any way to break the spell?” he asked.  
  
Snape smiled like a skull. “I doubt it,” he whispered. “Such a combination of spells has never happened before, to my knowledge, but others with similar effects _have,_ and in each case, there was nothing to do but live with it.” He shook his head, and his hair swung again. Harry wondered absently if Nagini’s bite had destroyed his ability to keep it up or something. “You wanted to protect us. You will—protect us. And you will doubtless be able to command us, as the Dark Lord could do. I would not be surprised to find that you can locate us at a blink, and perhaps make our Marks burn, as he did.” A pause, and Snape closed his eyes. “Further tasks must await the discovering.”  
  
Harry just nodded, because he didn’t think that he could do anything else. He looked back at the Slytherins, to find that Malfoy was the only one watching him. The others just leaned on their friends the way he leaned on Ron and Hermione, as if they were tired to death.  
  
And Malfoy’s eyes were terrified.  
  
Harry swallowed and turned back towards Snape again. “Fine. I’m going to—I’m going to rest and think, and see what I can come up with.”  
  
Snape bowed to him. _Bowed_ to him. Harry felt some combination of bile and a hysterical giggle working its way up his throat, and forcing it down again took more strength than it had to face Voldemort. “Of course, my lord,” Snape said. “It’s not as though this is our future and our lives that you’re talking about and proposing to put off dealing with until later. Nothing as important as that.”  
  
Harry turned away. “You don’t want to call me that again,” he said over his shoulder to Snape, “and I don’t want you to. You don’t need to bow to me. You don’t need to obey me.”  
  
“You don’t understand.”  
  
That was Lucius Malfoy’s voice. Harry turned to face him, too. His body was shaking, he realized distantly. He would have thought it was fever if that was possible, instead of just fear and anger and—he didn’t even have a name for the emotions that rolled through him. He had thought he was free now, of the prophecy and the burden it had laid on him. Another one, another one he thought he could hate more, since it made him a _master,_ had replaced it.  
  
“You don’t understand,” Lucius repeated, his voice low and his face inflexible. Harry thought he could see Lucius’s hand digging into Draco’s shoulder, but since Draco turned away and hid his face again immediately afterwards, he really wasn’t sure. “There is no breaking such a bond between Lord and vassal. You are, in multiple ways, responsible for them. You might command them not to obey you, but that would still be commanding them. They cannot act against you. They will need to know your will, not because they want to, but because that is what a Lord does. You will have to protect them.”  
  
Harry took a swaying step away from Ron and Hermione. He felt Ron trying to restrain him, saying something in his ear about how Hermione would find out about Lords and they could tell whether Malfoy was telling the truth that way, but he couldn’t listen. “What if I just asked you to kill me here and now?” he asked. “That would break the bond, wouldn’t it? That would mean Draco is set free?”  
  
He heard Snape hiss behind him, and didn’t ask why. Maybe he could have found out why, if he had asked. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to _command._ He didn’t want to have any contact with the Slytherins ever again, unless they needed him to testify at a trial or he was going to thank Narcissa Malfoy for saving his life. He just wanted to go away and live out the rest of his life, or at least drop senseless on a bed and remain so for a few hours.  
  
“I cannot,” Lucius said. “I told you. This is—this is not what the Dark Lord did with the Dark Marks.” His voice became low and charged, and no wonder, Harry thought. It wasn’t as though he _wanted_ to talk about being a Death Eater in front of a bunch of people who had either been Death Eaters themselves or suspected it all along about Lucius. “This is something else. This is a Lord bond, and I cannot act against the Lord who wards my son.” He raised Draco’s arm, which was so limp Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to see Draco fall in a dead faint, and turned it towards Harry. The mark looked like Pansy’s, Harry thought, and he stared blankly at it, wondering what he was supposed to see that was different.  
  
“This is a shield,” Lucius whispered. “You stood between him and danger. You saved his life. I saw it. I _cannot_ act against you. I _cannot_.”  
  
Harry rubbed his forehead. In retrospect, he thought it was probably kind of stupid to have asked for that, but he was tired of being mature and responsible and thinking about what was stupid. He wanted to go to _bed_.  
  
He turned his back on the Malfoys, too, and turned to Ron and Hermione, and said, “Look, I want to get some sleep. Can you make sure I’m not disturbed?”  
  
Ron, his eyes full of compassion, nodded. “Sure, mate. But I think…” He stooped down and picked something up. “This is yours.”  
  
Harry stared at the Elder Wand, and shut his eyes. “Shit,” he said succinctly.  
  
The only good thing he could think about the situation was that he might be able to use the Elder Wand to repair his own holly one. But not in front of these people. Not in front of all of them.  
  
He did take the hawthorn wand out of his waistband, where someone had stuck it, probably after he fell, and tossed it back to the Malfoys. Narcissa was the one who caught it, since Draco still had his head turned away.  
  
“Thanks,” Harry said tiredly, and turned away. “It’s yours now.”  
  
He managed to make it up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, and to his bed in a corner. He curled up with the Elder Wand throbbing like a broken limb next to him, and the stupid, _stupid_ bloody shield mark on his arm trembling and pulsing like a second heart.  
  
 _I never wanted this. I thought—I thought it was done. I thought no one would ask anything more of me after I defeated Voldemort, at least for a while. Wasn’t that what I was supposed to do?_  
  
And then he drifted off to sleep, because there was no one who could answer him. Maybe no one ever again.  
  



	2. Bruised

  
“What am I going to do?”  
  
Harry asked the question simply, leaning back against his pillows and staring at the wall. Ron and Hermione had finally come up to the Gryffindor Tower bedroom to get him after he had slept the rest of the day, that night, and until noon the next day. At least they’d brought a tray of food from the kitchens. Harry cracked open one of the scones and used a Warming Charm to melt the butter until he could dip the scone half in.   
  
“You have your wand back,” Ron said, in the tone of voice that said he was anxious to delay talking about everything else for as long as possible.  
  
Harry glanced down and shrugged a little. “Yeah. I thought—well, the Elder Wand is so powerful. It can probably repair anything. And it repaired _my_ wand.” He gave the holly wood a little pat.  
  
Unfortunately, that moved his right arm so that he could see the stupid shield mark again. Harry sneered and turned back to his lunch-breakfast. He didn’t want to think about the Lordship bond again except in the context of a solution.  
  
Hermione coughed and tugged a huge book from behind her. Harry wasn’t surprised to see that it was covered in shiny, burnished leather, as though someone had spent a long time handling it. He nodded and swallowed the hot bread and butter in his mouth. “What does it say about Lordship bonds?”  
  
“It says they’re bloody permanent,” Ron muttered. “Which they are.”  
  
“I didn’t really think I could break it,” Harry reminded him. “I just want to know how I can live with it, what I have to do.” This time, he took a huge gulp of pumpkin juice, both because Ron was opening his mouth to continue the argument and because Hermione was opening _hers_ like she was dying to talk.  
  
“Most Lords are really committed to caring for their people, Harry,” Hermione said, rubbing her fingers over the book and then flipping to what looked like the first of several floating bubbles that marked her place in it. “Voldemort perverted that when he used the Dark Marks. That’s where he got the idea, but he did everything that a Lord isn’t supposed to do. Tortured his people, made them commit crimes, and made sure they were the ones who took responsibility for anything they did.”  
  
Harry bristled. He’d been relaxing as Hermione talked, because he had wondered if the stupid bond would _require_ him to torture someone, and he refused, but this didn’t sound much better. “I’m not taking the responsibility for any crimes Malfoy commits.”  
  
“Not in that sense,” Hermione said, and rolled her eyes at him. “They could still commit crimes on their own, and their Lord would appear in court to answer for them, and pay fines if they were poor, but he wouldn’t have to serve Azkaban time or anything. I told you, a proper Lord bond doesn’t have anywhere near that level of control. What it means is that if they do something on your orders, you have to stand up for them.”  
  
“What if I don’t intend to ever issue any bloody orders?” Harry muttered.  
  
“You know what some of the Slytherins might do,” Hermione said, staring at him. “Maybe they won’t. This was the war, and we were all kids, and some of the things they did…I know they didn’t have any choice.” From the stupefied look on Ron’s face, Harry thought, she hadn’t discussed that thought process with _him_. “But what if they do something wrong after the war? Curse someone? _Threaten_ to curse someone, that’s a better example. You could just appear in court if they cursed someone. But if they told you they were going to do it, are you saying you wouldn’t order them to stop?”  
  
Harry glared at the tray on his lap. Unfortunately, the cheese and toast that were left failed to combust in crackling green flames the way he had pictured them doing. “Fuck.”  
  
Hermione said, “ _Language_ ,” in a way that reminded Harry so much of Professor McGonagall he almost looked around the room for her. Instead, Hermione picked up the book and cleared her throat loudly. “A Lordship bond has to flow both ways, though, or it’s not a proper bond. The vassals—”  
  
“Must you?” Harry demanded in a low voice he hadn’t thought he was capable of using until he heard it.  
  
“Yes, I must,” Hermione said, and gave him one of those looks she had given him several times during fifth year, sympathetic and hard at once. “Because this is what you’re going to have to live with from now on, and I don’t want someone taking advantage of their superior knowledge and trying to hurt you.”  
  
“I don’t think any of the Slytherins _can_ hurt him, now,” Ron piped up, swinging his legs back and forth. “That’s the way Mum said Lordship bonds worked yesterday, anyway.”  
  
“I was thinking more of the Ministry,” Hermione said. “But this is the way that it works. The vassals—” She paused, but Harry only nodded. He wouldn’t get anywhere by denying reality. Hermione beamed and continued reading. “The vassals need to serve the Lord. They traditionally fight at his side in battle, act as his seconds during duels, make sure that he doesn’t get exposed to danger from enemies who the vassals are able to deal with, and also sometimes donate money to him. Most of the time, though, the Lord is the stronger and richer wizard, so that only happens if the Lord needs a lot of funds at once. And he always pays it back.”  
  
Harry nodded. Of course he would. The thought of profiting from someone else’s money was horrible in the first place, and he wouldn’t want a fortune that was probably tainted with Muggle-hunting. “Make sure he doesn’t get exposed to danger from enemies he can’t deal with,” he said. “Does that mean, I don’t know, that Malfoy would have to protect me against his parents if they decided they hated me?”  
  
Hermione rolled her eyes at him. “You already said Mrs. Malfoy helped you in the Forest. And you heard what Lucius said yesterday. He can’t move against you, now.”  
  
“Not directly,” Harry pointed out, thinking of his fifth year, and his second. “But he has a lot of political contacts in the Ministry. What happens if he ‘encourages’ them to throw me in prison or something?”  
  
Hermione shook her head. “He can’t. His son is your vassal now, and just as you have the right to punish your vassals if they disobey you, you could do the same thing to him through them. Keep him from ever seeing Draco again, for example.”  
  
Harry recoiled. He was thinking of Draco shut up in a cupboard, his eyes closed and his head bent, and the image was so repulsive that he shoved the tray of food away. “I’m not doing that,” he said, loud enough to make the corners of the Tower ring.  
  
“Okay, Harry,” Hermione said, and reached out to take his hand.  
  
“It’s _wrong_ ,” Harry snarled, and more images of the Dursleys were in his head. Did he have the legal right to starve the Slytherins now, and make them do chores, and tell them they were freaks and keep them from contact with the wizarding world? He found that he was panting, and both Ron and Hermione were staring at him as though he had gone mental. Harry sort of wished he had. It would be easier. “It’s _sick_.”  
  
“If they curse someone, you would have to punish them,” Hermione said quietly. “That’s the repayment for you serving as their protection during the trial, and paying fines. The Ministry would waive doing anything—with most crimes, but not murder—because they would know _you_ would.”  
  
Harry bowed his head. “Well, anyway,” he said. “I could take their wands away for a while or something. Not imprison them.”  
  
“I think most Lords used whipping,” Ron said.  
  
“ _Not helping_ ,” Hermione said out of the corner of her mouth, but Harry lifted his head and shook it back and forth hard enough that he felt as though his neck would have snapped.  
  
“Out of the question,” he said. “Not acceptable.”  
  
“I know, I know, I know,” Ron said. “But it’s historical precedent, mate.” He hesitated, then added, “And I have to say, whipping Malfoy would go a lot towards making up for the things he’s done to us.”  
  
Harry glared at Ron. “Really not helping,” he said, before Hermione could say it. “And I don’t—look, I’m feeling protective towards the little git, all right?” That was the only way he could name the urge to strangle Ron with both hands. It ran through the back of his mind in a quicksilver current, part and not part of him. He slumped back into his pillows again with a sigh. “I don’t enjoy that. Stop threatening him, so I don’t have to feel that.”  
  
Ron nodded and patted him on the top of the head. “But you’ll have better targets than me, mate. We’ve already got Howlers denouncing Snape.”  
  
“Oh, shit,” Harry said, and tried to get out of bed. Hermione pushed the tray back at him and shook her head.   
  
“It’s better for you to eat as much as you can before you have to deal with this,” she said briskly. “I promise, none of them are going anywhere. There was more than enough room here for everyone, so people just stayed. And I think you’ll need your wits about you when you go and talk to Snape.”  
  
“Snape first?” Harry asked, taking back the pumpkin juice. “It has to be Snape first?”  
  
“He knows more than any of the others about Lordship bonds,” Hermione said quietly. “He lived under Voldemort, and he lived under Dumbledore. I don’t think either of them was the same thing, but he can help explain to the others. I think it has to be him first, yes.”  
  
Harry nodded wearily and drank. He reckoned he could get through this, the same way he had got through Voldemort stalking him for seven years.  
  
But he did wish that he could have felt what one normal day was like. A day of peace, without this connection.  
  
*  
  
“What are we going to _do_?”  
  
The voice soared into the upper registers, as of course it would, being a whinge. Severus kept his back turned as his hands flickered and danced among the ingredients in front of him. A Calming Draught, for himself in this case, was the first potion he had learned to prepare fully on his own. Draco could not distract him. No one had quite dared to keep Severus from his rooms and supply cupboards, and so he would complete this. He _would_.  
  
It did not escape his notice, it never did, that a few additions of the ground leaves in a vial off to the side could turn the Calming Draught to a deadly poison. But the fact was perhaps more—insistent—than it had been. Severus did not touch the leaves. They were there. They would wait.  
  
They were always an option, if it turned out that he hated life more than death.  
  
“But, Professor Snape.” Severus heard Draco kick the rungs of the chair he sat in as he leaned forwards. “I can’t live under this. And neither can the others,” he added, after a slightly shorter pause than usual. At least the war had come closer to making Draco consider other people as important, Severus thought. “It’s _unacceptable._ ”  
  
“So was the Dark Mark,” Severus said, and finished the Calming Draught, and cast a Cooling Charm that would render it a bit less effective than usual but finish it far more quickly, and picked up the vial, and drank it off. He kept his eyes closed when it had gone down his throat, and felt some clarity of mind returning. “And so was the war, and the risk of dying, and what you did to survive, and what I did under orders. We lived through it all. We will this.”  
  
He ignored what felt like the silent laughter of the vial. Draco was a young man with all his life before him. That escape was for Severus, not for him.  
  
“But it’s unacceptable,” Draco whispered, and his voice dipped low enough that Severus was reminded, uncontrollably, of how he had felt when he first began to doubt his wisdom in taking the Dark Mark. Draco didn’t see himself as a young man with all his life before him. He saw himself as a roped-off slave, compelled to do whatever the halter around his neck suggested. “There must be something we can do, some way of breaking the bond.”  
  
“You will have heard the tales of Lordship bonds,” Severus said, turning around. The Calming Draught had done its work. He could face Draco now and not snap, or reach out with his wand, which would be by far the more disastrous thing to do. “Did you ever hear of one that was broken?”  
  
“But most of them are deliberate.” Draco traced his fingers up and down his right arm, then seemed to realize what he was doing and snatched his hand away. “This one isn’t. Don’t you think that means we can break it?”  
  
“We would have to understand the exact mechanics of its formation,” Severus said, thinking of that moment of the blinding flash, when the Shield Charm had met the Harness Curse, and the immediate metallic pressing on his arm. It seemed to have happened even before the light reached him. “We are unlikely to when it was accidental.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth again, and then turned his head sharply as someone knocked at the door into Severus’s quarters. Severus moved to answer it, giving a little shudder with his shoulders beneath his robe that he knew Draco would not be subtle enough to catch. If the boy had said “But” one more time, Severus might have lost control of his temper, Calming Draught or no.  
  
The door opened to reveal Potter.  
  
Severus wanted to strike, but the mere thought made the metallic shield on his right arm heat a little. Of course it did. Lordship bonds were founded on loyalty—most of the time—and vassals rebelling against a Lord, even in their thoughts, were disloyal.  
  
Severus had once wondered why the Dark Lord had included no particular spell in the Dark Mark to tell him when one of his slaves plotted treason, but he knew the answer before he took the next breath. The Dark Lord thought it would be more amusing for his Death Eaters to struggle against him, within the limits of the curse that held them, futilely. They might hate, so long as they served.  
  
“What do you want?” Severus asked Potter. The shield heated on his arm again. He did not sound respectful enough for it. Severus did not care. He would bear much pain before he would bear the breaking of his will.  
  
Potter took a deep breath, and Severus took a critical look at him. His sojourn in the wild during the last year had damaged him less than Severus had expected. He was lean, but no more than that, and he bore few visible, new scars. Of course, he would also never be tall. Severus concealed a snort. To have a Lord he could loom over physically was a small comfort, but he would take what he could.  
  
He would do what he could to stay alive and free, until he reached the point where keeping those conditions in balance was hopeless. Then he would choose the second.  
  
He had not always been so determined, but he had served two masters and expected fully to die with the second. He would not serve now.  
  
“…wondered if you knew what we could do.”  
  
Severus blinked and came back. At least the bond was not of the kind that compelled the vassal to pay attention to his Lord’s every gesture, then. He had missed several of Potter’s words.  
  
“About the bond?” he asked, and then wanted to sneer at himself. What else would Potter be asking about?  
  
Potter nodded. “If there’s any way to weaken it or break it, then I thought you might know about that. If not, then, well…” Potter braced himself as if against a blow, and then very fast, “You know more than the others do about living with this kind of thing. I was hoping you might help me explain.”  
  
Severus’s arm felt as if it would burn off this time. He had raised his wand without thinking about it.  
  
Potter turned pale, but didn’t draw his own. He did cradle his right arm close to himself, though. Severus narrowed his eyes.  
  
 _So the bond also has restrictions from his side? Interesting._  
  
But perhaps not surprising, given that this ridiculous bond had come about in the first place because Potter had jumped in front of them, and raised a Shield Charm, and the resulting mixture of magic had read his intent as protective. Which it was. Utterly bloody inconvenient for the whole lot of them, of course, but real.  
  
Severus rubbed his face. Potter caused more trouble with his good intentions than the Dark Lord had with all his devotion to the Dark Arts.  
  
He lowered his wand and said, “There is no way to break such a purely accidental bond, or I would have told you the way to do it when we were discussing this the _first_ time.” He hissed the words. Potter was forcing him into another embarrassing confession about his lack of knowledge. The first one had been his choice. This one was not.  
  
Then Draco stepped up from behind him and peered at Potter, and his eyes went so wide that Severus stared at him. He would have known, from the words exchanged, that Potter was at the door.   
  
“You think that you can discard this bond as if it was a Chocolate Frog wrapper?” Draco sneered at Potter. “You’d think that, of course. Slytherin lives mean so _little_ to you.”  
  
“If that was true, then I would never have bothered pulling you out of that fire,” Potter snapped at Draco, and faced Severus again. “There’s no way you can think of weakening it, either?”  
  
“I would have already have suggested it if there was,” Severus said. “Unless you think that I enjoy being your slave, your pet?”  
  
“I never wanted slaves, either,” Potter said, and of course his voice got lower the way it did—the way James’s had done—when he was angry. He would think himself in the worse situation, Severus decided. Gryffindors always did. “You think I wanted to be a master? I just wanted—I just wanted to make sure that no more of them died.” He shut his eyes and rubbed up and down his arm for a second.  
  
“You’re an idiot,” Draco said. He winced as though his arm had begun to hurt him, but continued. Severus was glad to see that. If Draco could concentrate through the pain, he who had once been such a coward about it, then there was the chance that he would continue to fight for his freedom once Severus was gone. “This is what happened _to us_. At least on your side of the bond it doesn’t actually restrict your freedom.”  
  
“I don’t fancy being hauled off to court every time one of your tries to curse someone,” Potter snapped at him. “Or paying my Galleons over for your actions, either.”  
  
Draco went quiet. But his eyes glowed, and Severus knew the plan he had formed as surely as if he was in the boy’s head. He might be able to make Potter waste Galleons, if nothing else.  
  
But Draco did not know about the other side of the bond, so Severus spoke to make sure he did. If he wanted to take the risk, then he would, but Severus would not allow him to act in ignorance. “Then you would have to punish us, as required by the bond.”  
  
Potter turned eyes gleaming like green glass on him, and Severus blinked. The only thing that had convinced him Potter might feel something more than self-pity right now was the emotion in those eyes.  
  
“I don’t want to punish anyone,” Potter whispered. “Never. I never want—something like what happened to me to happen to them. To you.”  
  
Severus blinked a little again. Did the boy think it was a matter of detentions? Of writing lines or making someone scrub out cauldrons?  
  
Draco spoke again before Severus could find out. “If you try to curse me, I’m going to curse back.”  
  
There was a little movement behind Potter, and Granger tried to push forwards. “You mustn’t!” she said, loudly enough that Severus thought the echoes would probably travel down the corridors and rouse the people who had stayed in the school, including Order of the Phoenix members and Aurors, in an attempt to figure out what should be arrested next. “It could get you hurt, terribly hurt. All the books say that a vassal can’t hurt his Lord—”  
  
It was a matter of who would open their mouths the most quickly in order to shout at Granger, Severus thought, but he had not thought it would be Potter who would win the race, much less Potter who would whirl violently on Granger.  
  
“He only said that he would if I cursed him first, which I shouldn’t do either, because I’m supposed to be his Lord, who _protects_ him,” Potter snapped. “So lay off him.”  
  
Granger looked so astonished that there was no room in her face for hurt. Potter was the one who flushed and stared at the floor, rubbing his right arm.  
  
“Stupid bond,” Severus thought he heard him whisper, but he could not be sure.  
  
The next minute, he looked up at Severus with an expression a mule could have taken lessons from. “Look, are you going to try and convince the others that it’s better to live in this bond than commit suicide, at least?”  
  
Severus convinced himself that Potter’s eyes did not peer inside Severus’s soul when he spoke those words. He seemed to think the children were more of a suicide risk, anyway.   
  
“I will talk to them,” Severus said. “But I do not think you should be present. Not for the first conversation.”  
  
Potter just chopped his head down in a nod and turned away. Severus watched him walk to the end of the corridor and then abruptly glance around and clap a hand to his arm.   
  
“What is it?” Draco asked. He had pressed forwards to watch Potter, too, ignoring the way Severus tried to shoo him back. He would.  
  
“I knew you were in the dungeons because I could feel it through the shield,” Potter said slowly, turning his head to the right and staring at two doors. “And I can feel two other people down here, too. But—I can’t feel Zabini anywhere in the castle. Where is he? What happened to him?”  
  
 _Strange,_ Severus thought, in the middle of his own stirring emotions, _to hear concern in the voice of someone with power over you._


	3. Flight

  
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” That was Malfoy’s voice, tight and panicked, almost a throb behind Harry. Harry put a hand on his own arm without thinking about it. Something small and tight ached there, probably the dot that represented Malfoy. He shook his head. The shield on him didn’t seem to pick up emotions before, but this time it was doing it. He had no idea why. He would have to find out.  
  
But for now, he had to find Zabini.  
  
“Potter! What do you mean?”  
  
Harry gritted his teeth as that quicksilver feeling ran through him again, joined by a second strand. He wanted to protect Malfoy from the distress he was feeling, and he wanted to tell him to shut up and be a little respectful, and neither impulse was _his_. Sure, he would have told Malfoy to shut up on any ordinary day, but not because of _that_.  
  
“I mean, he’s out of the school,” Harry said, in a clipped tone, and cast a Privacy Charm around himself, because Malfoy was already whining about something else. He didn’t seem to understand that the more he whined, the less likely he was to get a good answer to his question.  
  
Alone inside the Charm—Ron and Hermione stared at him from outside it, but didn’t try to interrupt—Harry found he could focus. The shield mark heated under his palm, and the pinprick swelled up in the blackness behind his eyelids.  
  
A little green dot that marked Zabini was moving steadily away from the school. Harry blinked his eyes open when he realized where it was headed. He would have expected Zabini to be trying to get off the grounds as soon as possible so he could Apparate, but he was just as glad he hadn’t.  
  
“He’s going into the Forbidden Forest,” he snapped for anyone who cared to listen, then realized the Privacy Charm was still up and they couldn’t hear him. He lowered it, repeated himself, and started up the corridor.  
  
“ _Potter!_ ”  
  
The bond tried to drag his feet to a halt. Harry opened his mouth in a silent snarl. He ruled here, not a bond, and it wasn’t going to make him abandon everything he wanted to do just to fulfill the stupid requirements of being a Lord.  
  
It felt like forcing his way through water, but he was able to do it. And then Zabini entered the perimeter of the Forbidden Forest, or so Harry thought from the thick cloud of darkness hovering in the back of his mind, and suddenly the force dissolved and Harry could move easily. Harry reckoned that the danger Zabini was in had just surpassed the distress Malfoy was feeling behind him.  
  
He ran. He could hear concerned shouting behind him, from Hermione and Ron about how he hadn’t had enough rest to fling himself back into battle and some of the Death Eaters had escaped, from Malfoy about how he hadn’t answered questions. Snape didn’t say a thing. Well, Harry hadn’t expected him to. From the way that another cloud of darkness appeared, swaying, when he focused on Snape, he reckoned that every moment he wasn’t around, Snape could still pretend that he was free.  
  
 _I will have to do something about that._  
  
But he also had to protect Zabini from walking down a werewolf’s gullet or something else equally idiotic. He sped up, shaking his head. What would Zabini have gone into the Forbidden Forest _for_? There were quicker ways of committing suicide, if he wanted to, and Harry would think a Slytherin would choose that. They were usually cowards about facing pain.  
  
*  
  
Blaise paused and looked over his shoulder. Yes, the trees had closed in behind him, and the leaves he had stirred up with magic had settled over his trail. Blaise shut his eyes and exhaled, hard.  
  
 _Potter could still find me. But it doesn’t matter._  
  
Blaise had to move fast enough that that couldn’t happen. He opened his eyes and walked further on, further into the forest.  
  
The shadows around him trembled, inky and stalking him. Blaise ignored them. The thick pink line of his charm still blazed in front of him, leading him through hollows and over roots and around the edges of ponds that lay still on the surface but more than stagnant underneath. It would guide him to the creatures he wanted to find.  
  
Soon enough, he heard them, the quick thumps that suggested the beating of hooves. Blaise kept his eyes lowered, studying that trembling roseate line. He walked until he reached a clearing, ochre and golden still with fallen leaves from last season, and then turned around and spread his arms.  
  
The hoofbeats slowed, and Blaise could see the shadows of heads from the edges of the clearing, bending past tree trunks to watch him. Blaise kept his arms spread. He didn’t drop his wand yet, although his mother had advised it when dealing with centaurs. Blaise knew that there were probably going to be some complications, and he didn’t want to die if he didn’t manage to bargain them into taking his mark away.  
  
“I come to offer a deal,” he said calmly. “Any enchantments you want, in exchange for removing one.”  
  
There was another long silence, before the first centaur chose to reveal himself. He was a thick-bodied one, with gleaming black flanks and a long, flicking dark tail that he swished back and forth as though he was dusting the earth with it. Or removing his own footprints, Blaise thought, staring him in the eyes. The centaur reared his head back and shook the cross between a hair and a mane, glossy, blackberry-colored curls, that spilled down almost to his back.  
  
“What makes you think we can remove this enchantment?” he asked. Blaise could hear hooves closing in from other sides, but he didn’t remove his eyes from the one in front of him. That he had chosen to open with talk of a bargain meant he was at least _considering_ Blaise’s offer. That made it worthwhile for Blaise to pay attention to him.   
  
“Because it is on the skin,” Blaise said. “And there was a time when centaurs were renowned as healers.”  
  
He let his doubt creep into his voice, and someone snorted from behind him. A roan centaur with golden hair trotted around him and up to the black one, considering the shield. Blaise had spread his arms partially because it was the ritual gesture his mother had taught him to use, but it also had the advantage of letting them see the shield mark. Obligingly, Blaise lifted his arm higher and further.  
  
“We can remove this one,” said the roan centaur to the black one. “But why should we? He is a young wizard and arrogant like all the rest.”  
  
“I am a slave against my will,” Blaise said. He didn’t know why they’d called attention to his age, but he didn’t plan to focus on it. His mother had warned him ahead of time that he wouldn’t understand everything the centaurs said, and he shouldn’t expect to. He should focus on what was important, keep moving forwards. “That makes me desperate. You might have mistaken that for arrogance, honored sirs.”   
  
He used the honorific on purpose, and bowed. It was a bit of a gamble, but centaurs hated not being treated as politely as wizards. This might help.  
  
The roan centaur looked at the first one. Blaise noted that his eyes were as golden as molten coins, and his hoof had stopped pawing the ground so hard.  
  
“You will do it?” the black one asked what appeared to be thin air, since he was looking over the roan’s head.  
  
The roan nodded, his hair flapping. “We have not claimed a favor from a wizard in a long time,” he said, and turned back to Blaise. “This one is young. Who knows what enchantments he might know that we have not heard of?”  
  
“I will cast whatever spell you want me to,” Blaise said, meeting his eyes unblinking. “If I don’t know it, then I’ll go and research it, and leave my wand here as insurance that I will come back.”  
  
The black one inclined his head once, and faded away into the shadows. The roan trotted up to Blaise, his hoof scraping so hard that he carved a shallow trough in the dirt when he stopped in front of Blaise. “I will kneel down to study the mark,” he said. “Do not move. I must be undisturbed for the initial examination.”  
  
Blaise nodded. The centaur knelt, his forelegs folding neatly beneath him. This close, Blaise could see more clearly how _big_ he was; he still had to bend his head a little to study the mark on Blaise’s arm. Blaise could see the glossy muscles shivering under the skin, too, and smell the distinct scents of stallion and sweat.  
  
The centaur snorted and turned his head to meet Blaise’s eyes. “This is a Lord marking. How can you not have agreed to it?”  
  
Blaise smiled tightly. He was glad that he had stayed up to discuss it with Pansy last night before going to bed, because she had been the one to give him the details he’d need to convince the centaur now. “The bond was the result of an accident, when a spell that was meant to enslave someone combined with a Shield Charm cast by Harry Potter. I was merely in the way.”  
  
“You are _his_ vassal?” The centaur scrambled back to all fours and took a slow step back from him, glaring as though Blaise had lied to him on purpose. “The one who brought down the dark star and restored the supernova?”  
  
 _Centaurs are obsessed with the heavens and astronomy,_ his mother’s cool voice said in the back of his head. Blaise kept from curling his lip with that reminder, but it was frustrating, when the terms of the bargain so far had kept the creatures reasonable and from exploding into meaningless star-talk. “I don’t know what that means,” he said, as calmly as he could. “But it was an accident, not a true Lord-bond, and I want it gone.”  
  
“If you are bound to the one who brought down the dark star, then we cannot,” said the centaur, and looked over his shoulder into the woods as though hoping that someone would show up and rescue him from having to keep his side of the bargain. “You cannot think that a Lord-bond would be so easy to end as that, whether it was an accident or not.”  
  
Blaise sneered and raised his eyebrows. “I don’t see why not. It’s not who he is that matters. It’s this bond.” He shook his arm again so that the centaur would look at it. “You couldn’t tell who had made it until I told you. That makes it no different from any other. You could still heal me.”  
  
“It would not be healing, to remove that.” The centaur was scraping another groove in the ground, but with his left hind hoof now, smearing his legs with dirt. “It would be condemnation.”  
  
Blaise glared, but then his arm jerked to the side, and he gritted his teeth. Yes, Potter was coming. That pull pointed back into the forest. Potter didn’t have to use the charm that Blaise did to find the centaurs; he just followed the tug of the bond. Probably only the obstacles that Blaise had avoided but which Potter had crashed through had delayed him even this long.  
  
“I’ll cast whatever enchantment you want,” Blaise said, catching the roan’s eye again. “Kill a wizard for you. Be among the ones who are fighting for your rights in the Ministry. Be whatever you want. Just take it off me.”  
  
“Why are you so desperate to escape something that could protect you?” The centaur studied him with deep, liquid eyes, hoof still scraping. “You must know that the black star would have taken you otherwise.”  
  
“I’d like to know that, too.”  
  
Blaise turned his head. He wanted to bite his tongue, or strike at Potter. But the shield on his arm flared to life at that, and he stood there trying not to cry out instead. Which was not the way he had wanted to confront someone who now legally owned him.  
  
Potter stood against the big tree at the very edge of the clearing, the one with bronze leaves piled around its base. His hair was as dark as the star the centaur had been going on about, his eyes as verdant a green as the Forest would turn in a few weeks. And he moved a step forwards with his hand cradling his own right arm.  
  
“I knew where you had gone,” he said quietly. “I just didn’t know why.”  
  
The centaur had faded back into the shadows. Blaise didn’t bother looking after him. For the first time in his life, his mother’s teachings had failed him. She had told him centaurs were hungry for recognition from wizards after years of being ignored and despised; it was the best and easiest way to get one of them to help him.  
  
 _Obviously, it’s different when you’re Potter’s plaything._  
  
“I wanted to get rid of this,” Blaise said. He didn’t listen to his own voice, for the first time in a long time, didn’t care whether it was respectful or cautious or prideful. He just watched Potter, who watched him back. “I don’t want to be a slave. I had the impression you didn’t want to be a Lord, either. Isn’t equality important to you?” He didn’t give a shit about sounding as if he were begging, which he knew his mother would have condemned him for. If it could free him, he would play on Potter’s Gryffindor sympathies.  
  
“It is,” Potter said. “But Hermione’s assured me that there’s no way to break this.”  
  
“Obviously, your friend is the most brilliant witch in creation,” Blaise said. He didn’t fold his arms, didn’t touch the right one, even though the burning had shifted to an incandescent pain. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter, or he would begin his fall from control of his own mind right here. He knew it was happening because the Lord bonds ran on loyalty, and every thought he had at the moment was disloyal. But so what? If he succeeded, it wouldn’t matter. “The centaurs are healers. This is essentially a skin infection. If they can remove it, we could be free.”  
  
He didn’t miss the way Potter’s breath caught, or how he leaned forwards. Blaise smiled. “You like the sound of that,” he murmured.  
  
“Hell yes.” But then Potter turned his head and frowned into the woods. “The centaur didn’t seem to think he could treat you. Why was that?”  
  
“Because it’s you,” Blaise said. “And there was some nonsense about dark stars and what you supposedly saved me from. But if we can find another one, one who doesn’t care about that, isn’t it worth _trying_?”  
  
Potter stared at him for a little while longer. Well, squinted, really. Blaise stood there even though he wanted to touch his arm, or at least put some distance between them. He had never paid that much attention to Potter; Draco was the one who couldn’t stop talking about how Potter was plotting against them and had to be humiliated. But he could see how the seeds of frustration could grow up into hatred. Potter wasn’t doing anything. Blaise had thought the good thing about Gryffindors was how quickly they made a decision when finally pushed into it.  
  
“You don’t know anything about the cure,” Potter said. “I do want to be free of this, if there’s a way. But both Hermione and Snape seem to think there isn’t. I think we ought to go back to the school and talk about it with them.”  
  
“Your precious Mudblood friend isn’t part of this bond,” Blaise said.  
  
He gasped in the next moment, because the pain of the shield mark was so severe that he could no longer keep his hand off it. He stared at Potter as he did it, though. Because, really, what was disloyal about that? None of the Lord bonds Blaise was familiar with included disparaging remarks about the Lord’s associates under the name of treachery.  
  
But Potter turned away instead of hitting him, or making a smirking remark about punishment the way Blaise would have thought he would if he had started to learn about Lord bonds. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to the school. If the centaurs are a viable option, Snape can tell us that.”  
  
Blaise stood in place and shook his head, despising the quivering impulse in his legs that wanted to obey Potter. He might _want_ to, with that particular corrupted corner of his being, but he was not _going_ to, and sooner or later his body would learn that. He had yielded, foolishly so far, under the impression that Potter’s longing for freedom was greater than his need to yield to authority. It seemed Blaise had been wrong, even if the authority in question was Snape.  
  
“You aren’t going to be a good Lord,” Blaise said. “When you can’t make up your mind without resorting to other people’s opinions? That’s not what a _Lord_ does.”  
  
Potter stopped and turned to glance back at him slowly, his eyes round and alien. Blaise wondered if it was his imagination that the shadows in the Forest around them were darker, and decided it was. He wouldn’t let it be anything else.  
  
“But I don’t want to be a good Lord in the sense you mean,” Potter said. “I don’t want to be an—an autocrat.” He said the word like it was one he’d fetched up from the dusty pages of a book somewhere. Blaise snorted. Potter glared at him some more, and gave his head a sharp little jerk that made him look like he was the one collared and bound to a horrible fate. “I want—I want to listen to other people and rule that way. If I have to.”  
  
Blaise paused. The shadows kept growing darker, but the burn in his mark had once again retreated to a manageable level.  
  
It had never occurred to him that this might be a possible escape, that Potter was simply too _weak_ to hold him. Normally, a vassal couldn’t attack a Lord because the Lord was stronger, magically and every other way.  
  
But this wasn’t a normal circumstance, was it? Blaise could hear his mother’s voice crooning in the back of his mind, urging him to pay attention.   
  
_Potter didn’t even defeat the Dark Lord by virtue of greater magical power, the way he should have if he wanted to claim anyone else’s allegiance. He did it by accident. If Draco hadn’t disarmed the Headmaster, if Potter hadn’t disarmed Draco, if the Elder Wand hadn’t happened to come into the Dark Lord’s hand the way it did…_  
  
Blaise’s hand shook a little as he rested it on his wand. The pain flared again, but dimly, as if the bond didn’t really understand what he was doing.  
  
 _No, Potter’s the one who doesn’t understand._ Potter still stood there, staring at him, blinking a little. Each time he did, he seemed to shade those disturbing green eyes for a second longer.  
  
Blaise half-crouched and stared over Potter’s shoulder. It was the oldest deception of all, but Potter fell for it, like the stupid Gryffindor he was. Potter whirled around, drawing his own wand in a graceful motion that Blaise would have admired if he was another Slytherin.  
  
Blaise struck, with a nonverbal incantation that his mother had made him practice again and again until he could do it. Not a powerful spell, or you wouldn’t think so from hearing its name, the Stopping Charm. No muss, no fuss, no cleft flesh and blood flying everywhere. The most common use for the Stopping Charm was to halt small moving parts, like a clock’s pendulum, so they could be repaired or set going anew.  
  
But applied to a small valve in the heart—  
  
Potter spun to face him, throwing one hand out as though he was defending himself against Blaise but was too lazy to summon a Shield Charm.   
  
And then Blaise’s right arm was on fire, he was screaming, the pain flashed through him and blinded his brain, and he writhed on the ground, all colors and voices and consequences gone into the white burning.  
  
*  
  
 _Shit. Shit! I didn’t mean to do that!_  
  
But Harry, as he ran to Zabini’s side, knew that he had done at least part of it. He had seen Zabini aiming his wand at him, had felt a quiver in his chest that made his heart beat faster than normal, and had thought, first and foremost, of stopping the treacherous little shit.  
  
And he had been able to. Because he had the bond, and when he had imagined Zabini in pain, the way he used to imagine Dudley and Malfoy and Snape…  
  
This time, he had the ability to actually _make_ them suffer. And if he did that around Malfoy and Snape, they would suffer the same thing, the same punishment. It was worse than what the Dursleys had done to him.  
  
 _Shit._  
  
Harry dropped to the ground beside Zabini. He was screaming, or he had been, but the sound had trailed off now, and the only noise coming out of him was a thin, faint whistle, as though his vocal cords were straining to produce more, and couldn’t. His heels hit the ground, and then his legs straightened out so they simply hung in the air, too far off the earth even to give off that basic signal of pain.  
  
“Fuck, stop,” Harry yelled straight into his face. Nothing happened. Zabini continued to act as though his arm was burning up, and Harry shook him and slapped him and yelled some more, words he couldn’t remember later, but it didn’t stop. Harry shut his eyes and tried to concentrate through the whistling to remember what Hermione and Snape had said about Lord bonds, to see if it would give him some sort of clue.  
  
It didn’t. Or it didn’t seem to. They had just said that he had the power to punish, and that somehow everyone would know and agree that it was appropriate. _Not Zabini,_ Harry thought, flinching as he touched Zabini’s arm and felt the muscles, like ridged marble. No one had told him how to stop the punishment.  
  
Then a simple idea hit him, and because nothing else had worked, he tried it.  
  
“I forgive you,” he whispered, and tried to put as much true feeling behind that as he could, not just horror at Zabini being hurt, because horror had done nothing so far to stop this _stupid_ thing.  
  
Zabini’s limbs dropped back to the earth. He lay there panting, for a second, and then he opened his eyes and stared at Harry. He had the glazed look Harry remembered seeing on Ron’s face after Ron had been attacked by the flying brains in the Department of Mysteries. Probably in shock.   
  
Then he passed out.  
  
Harry knelt there, still staring at him, and then swallowed and stood up. He had caused this, and that meant he had to make up for it somehow. He lifted Zabini into the air with the gentlest spell he knew, and created a stretcher beneath him. It was a difficult charm, but he’d seen Madam Pomfrey use it before, and it seemed to come easier when he concentrated, so maybe the Lord bond was good at something besides hurting people.  
  
Then he turned and started guiding the stretcher back to the castle, making sure that it went around trees instead of crashing into them.  
  
He didn’t like this, he thought with every step. He didn’t like, most of all, the gentle warmth that had settled into his own shield mark, as though he had done something comforting instead of burning Zabini’s arm off.  
  
They might all have to live with it, although maybe the centaurs were an option. But Harry _had_ to find some way to control his temper. They would all suffer if he didn’t.


	4. Questions and Skin Infections

  
Harry stepped into a quiet entrance hall. But he could feel the tension thrumming up and around from at least four people in the mark on his arm.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and sighed. Zabini hadn’t awakened at all on the march to the castle. He wondered if that was a good or a bad thing. On one hand, it meant he hadn’t screamed his head off. On the other, Harry would have liked some reassurance that he was still alive.  
  
The shield mark on his arm wasn’t going crazy _now_ , and Zabini’s breathing was still slow and steady. Maybe that was all the reassurance he really needed.  
  
Footsteps moving towards him made Harry take up a protective stance in front of the stretcher, his wand raised. He hadn’t seen them personally, but if Ron and Hermione were right, there were Aurors in the school. Aurors might be reasonable, like the ones in the Order, or they might want to arrest everyone who had been involved with the Slytherins in any way, like Scrimgeour. Harry couldn’t let them take Zabini—even assuming he had been involved with Death Eaters—until he knew if he was all right.  
  
But it was Ron and Hermione, followed by Mrs. Weasley and Ginny and a few other Gryffindors, who appeared around the corner. Harry relaxed and waved at them to come closer. As long as no one insulted Zabini or tried to attack him, it should be all right.  
  
“What happened, Harry?” Hermione whispered, coming to a halt in front of him and peering around him at Zabini, as if she could tell by looking. Maybe she could. After the last year and how many times she had kept them alive on the run, Harry had started to try never to underestimate the amount of knowledge Hermione had.  
  
“Oh, _Harry!_ ” someone shouted before he could answer, and then Mrs. Weasley hugged him.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and squeezed her back. Of course he was glad that his friends had brought him food this morning and started discussing the situation, so he had _someone_ to talk to who was sane, but he was also glad someone was here who would just hold him and make clucking noises and ask, as Mrs. Weasley did a minute later, if he was all right and had he had a chance to take a bath and he shouldn’t give interviews until he was ready and was he all _right_.  
  
Harry had to swallow as a huge lump of emotion rose up in his throat. It felt like—loneliness. Homesickness. But what he was homesick for was his parents and what it probably would have been like if they were alive.  
  
“I’m all right,” he finally said, when Mrs. Weasley left him a breath in edgewise to answer. “Thank you. I’m—still dealing with all this, and Zabini and I both did something stupid out in the woods, but we’re okay. I think,” he added, with one more dubious glance at the stretcher. Zabini didn’t contradict him, but it was kind of hard to when he was flat on his back with his eyes shut.  
  
“What did you do that was stupid out in the woods?”  
  
That was Ginny, her eyes so big they seemed as if they would overwhelm most of her face, looking at him sideways, and quietly. Her voice was quiet, too. Harry put out his hand, and Ginny took it, looking earnestly at him.   
  
Harry tried to remember if she had looked at him that way before the war. He thought so, but honestly, so much seemed fuzzy and ill-defined about that time, while everything since had been thrown into sharp relief. He had to clear his throat a few times before he answered. “Zabini used a spell on me. I don’t know exactly what it was, but it made my heart jump.”  
  
“Like you were running?” Ron asked, leaning forwards to peer at Harry’s chest as if his heart would explode out and splatter him with blood. Harry had to admit that would have been much wilder than what he actually had to report.  
  
“No,” Harry said. “Like it was going to stop. Like—he was trying to give me a heart attack. But I don’t know if he actually was,” he added hastily, because everyone else was gaping at him and he was afraid they wouldn’t take what Harry had retaliated with seriously enough. “I reacted like he was, and the bond punished him.”  
  
“I don’t see any sign of it,” Hermione said, leaning forwards and studying Zabini’s face and chest.  
  
“You whipped him, and you healed the whip marks?” Ron sounded disappointed.  
  
Harry rubbed his forehead as that damn quicksilver feeling moved through him again, and squeezed harder on Ginny’s hand. “ _No_. Will you please stop saying things like that, mate? It makes me uncomfortable.”  
  
“Sorry.” Ron shook his head. “But he looks okay for having just been through a punishment. Maybe you’re taking it too seriously.”  
  
“Lordship is a very serious thing,” Mrs. Weasley said, frowning at him. Ron rolled his eyes at Harry behind her back as she turned to Harry and patted his shoulder in a steadying way. “What did you do, Harry dear?”  
  
“I caused him some kind of pain,” Harry whispered. “In his arm, I think, since he grabbed it first. He was in so much pain he couldn’t even _scream._ Just whistle this kind of—thin cry. And his legs were hanging in midair.”  
  
There was a movement on the edge of his mind and the edge of the hall at once. Harry looked up and saw black robes sweeping around the corner. He winced. Snape had been listening, he thought. And now he would probably think Harry was a worse Lord and they were all in more danger than ever.  
  
“You hurt him?” Ginny whispered. Her face had gone pale.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “It didn’t stop even when I said stop. It didn’t stop until I said I forgave him.”  
  
In the silence that followed, Ginny detached her hand from his.  
  
Harry turned to her with his mouth open, and then closed it when he saw the look she was giving him. He didn’t know what to do with it, really, or if he should do anything. Maybe she was right to look at him like that. He would have said she was until it actually started happening. He swallowed and turned back to Hermione.  
  
“I want to get Madam Pomfrey to look at him,” he said. “Or some other Healer, if there’s anyone here. Is there?”  
  
“I am.”  
  
Harry jumped. He thought he had already become used to feeling and hearing other people around him through the bond, so he was surprised that the woman striding towards him now had managed to come this close without him noticing her. Especially since she was almost as tall as Snape, and had lime-green robes on, and had a smile that made him think of the way Dumbledore smiled when he was going into battle.  
  
She nodded to Harry, said, “My name is Healer Emeraude Kislik, Lord Potter. St. Mungo’s summoned me because I have some experience in dealing with the victims of Lordship bonds,” and tapped her wand on Zabini’s chest, murmuring to herself. Flashing red letters appeared above his head. Harry had no idea what they meant. He watched them bob and shine in place, while Healer Kislik nodded to herself or shook her head depending on what seemed to be chance.  
  
“Victims?” Hermione was the one to ask. “What do you mean by that?”  
  
Kislik smiled at Hermione. This time it was the smile, Harry thought, of a shark that had spotted something slow-moving and delicious in the water.  
  
“I’ll explain later, after I’ve finished making sure this young man didn’t take permanent damage,” she said, and looked at Harry. Harry flinched. Kislik nodded. “You’ll have to make sure that you control your temper in the future, when you have other lives depending on the sweetness of it,” she murmured.  
  
She turned back to Zabini, and Harry turned his head to the stairs that led down to the dungeons. Two of his Slytherins were coming this way. Malfoy and Parkinson, he thought, concentrating on them.  
  
Then he realized what he had thought and blinked. _My Slytherins? I don’t want to think like that, either._  
  
But Malfoy and Parkinson appeared on the scene then, loud and demanding, _real_ people, and Harry had to forget about things inside his own head for a while. Because their reaction to the sight of Zabini on a stretcher was as loud and real as anything he could have wished them to show. They weren’t under his control so fully that they would stop expressing their emotions just because it would be more comfortable for him, and he had to be grateful for that.  
  
*  
  
“What happened to Blaise?”  
  
Pansy’s voice was low and horrified. Draco shook his head, rejecting the feeling for a second if not the question. He couldn’t take on Pansy’s horror in addition to his own. He had learned during the war that that didn’t work. He could only carry so much fear, or he would explode.  
  
He took a cautious step forwards, and felt Pansy fall into step behind him. At least she would kind of shadow him and back him up if it turned out that Potter had beaten Blaise to death. That was something.  
  
A slight burn from his arm made Draco grimace. Yes, yes, the bond was punishing him for his disloyal thoughts about Potter. It didn’t matter. He had torn out of here and hadn’t explained to _any_ of them where he was going. Draco hadn’t done a lot of reading about Lord bonds, but what he had done said that Lords owed a responsibility to their vassals just as the vassals owed a duty to them. He should have told someone. What would have happened if he’d died out in the Forest?  
  
 _Then we’d be free._  
  
Draco sighed and walked towards Potter, Pansy trailing at his heels. Professor Snape had tried to tell him again and again that he couldn’t get caught up in elaborate plans and not _do_ anything. And right now it would be stupid to try and plan anything anyway, since he didn’t know enough.  
  
“What did you to do to him, Potter?” he said, and then blinked and lowered his voice as he realized Potter was already looking at him. He’d thought he would have to fight for his attention with the Weasleys. “Why did you do it?”  
  
Potter bit his lip. He had some dirt on his cheek, and he folded his arms as if he wanted to hide the shield mark. Draco just stood there and looked at him. He didn’t think Potter had fought Blaise, or both of them would have been a lot more battered.  
  
“I think we should wait for Goyle and Snape,” Potter said. “I only want to have to explain this once.”  
  
“That bad, is it?” Pansy had found enough courage to put her head around from behind Draco, and sneer at Potter. “You can’t find a way to make it look good to anyone who hears it, so you’re going to hesitate and stutter along if you have to say it more than once?”  
  
Potter kept his head turned away instead of looking at her, focusing instead on the stretcher and something the Healer who stood there was saying to him. Draco sniffed. He was at least glad that a _proper_ Healer was taking care of Blaise, although she might only be trying to get him well enough to survive his stint in Azkaban.  
  
“You can answer me,” Pansy said, raising her voice. “Gregory won’t come out of his room for anything, and Professor Snape has more important things to do than listen to your convoluted explanations.”  
  
“What about Malfoy?” Potter turned back around and, this time, to Draco’s discomfort, he really was looking directly at Draco. “Do you want to hear it twice, or just once? Here?”  
  
Draco licked his lips and found his voice, which had gone into hiding somewhere in the back of his throat. “I think you should apologize for running out and leaving us with no idea of what was going on, whether Blaise was in danger or you were.”  
  
Potter looked at him, and then smiled. Draco took a wary step back, but that didn’t work well, because Pansy had tried to hide behind him in turn. They collided, and spent a moment wobbling back and forth while Weasleys snickered.  
  
“I didn’t think you would care that much about the last part,” Potter muttered.  
  
“You’re our Lord now,” Pansy said, popping her head out again. “We’ve got to obey you and follow you around and do what you say.” Draco frowned. Pansy tended to repeat herself a lot, one reason Draco didn’t think much of her stated ambition to be a politician. Her speeches would bore everyone too much for them to listen to her innovative proposals. “I don’t exactly _want_ to do this, but if we don’t, then the Aurors here would probably arrest us.”  
  
“I wouldn’t let that happen,” said the Healer working on Blaise calmly, without looking up.  
  
Pansy blinked at her. Draco took up the thread of the argument, because none of this was getting them to the heart of what they needed to know, which was what Potter had done to Blaise. “What _happened,_ Potter?”  
  
Potter sighed a little, and said, “You might as well come out and hear it with the rest of them, Professor Snape.”  
  
Draco turned his head in surprise. He had always been the best of the students in Slytherin at telling when their Head of House was nearby, but he hadn’t sensed it at all in this case. Snape slowly stepped out into the entrance hall, sneered at Potter, and spread his arms mockingly. “My ears work whether they are a few meters or one from you, Potter.”  
  
“Yes, well,” Potter said, and Draco thought he saw him bite his tongue. But he didn’t know why, and he didn’t care, because Potter was turning around as if to make sure that his audience of obedient little hangers-on was paying attention, too, and perhaps they would finally get to hear why their friend was _lying in a stretcher._  
  
“Zabini went out into the Forbidden Forest,” Potter said, not raising his voice much. “He thought the centaurs might be able to remove the Lord-bond mark. He thinks of it as a skin infection, apparently, and the centaurs are skilled healers.”  
  
Draco caught his breath. He hadn’t thought of that, but it was marvelous for Blaise to have done so. On the other hand, centaurs were savage creatures and the stories of their healing wizards were centuries old. But perhaps a Healer from St. Mungo’s could do the same thing? This one seemed to be at least a little sympathetic to them.  
  
And her hands had stopped working over Blaise while she listened, Draco noticed. Maybe that was a good sign.  
  
“The centaur refused to touch the Lord-bond because—because it was me, basically.” Potter rubbed his face, which was a stupid gesture since it drove his glasses into his nose and then he had to straighten them out again. “Something about a black star and a supernova. I don’t know. I tried to get Zabini to come back to the castle with me, and he attacked me. I felt this odd jump in my chest and I turned around and he had his wand raised. I thought he was trying to attack me, maybe cause a heart attack.”  
  
“That’s impossible,” Pansy snapped. “Blaise wouldn’t be that stupid. He knows that a Lord is always stronger than a vassal. You can’t get free by killing a Lord.”  
  
Potter snorted, and the sound was bitter enough to make Draco start. “But I’d just been nice to him, a little, and asked him questions instead of commanding him to obey. Maybe he thought that meant I was too weak to be a Lord.”  
  
Draco looked at Pansy without meaning to, and found her looking back. She gave the shadow of a nod. Yes, that might be something Blaise would think.  
  
Draco glanced at Professor Snape, too, and saw him standing with his arms folded, his head tilted to the side as he listened.  
  
“I turned around,” Potter was saying now, reciting in a dull voice. “I was angry. I lifted my hand. And Zabini started screaming. I think the pain started in his shield mark. He looked like he was on fire. Not visibly, but—it was that kind of pain. In a little while, he couldn’t even make noise anymore, it was so bad.”  
  
Draco wondered if he was the only one who saw Ginny Weasley wrap her arms around herself and take a long step back from Potter. Or maybe Potter’s eyes, flickering sideways before he returned his gaze to them, saw it, too.  
  
“It didn’t end until I forgave him,” Potter said, and then he took a deep breath like someone drowning and turned on Professor Snape. “Is there any way you can stop this? There _must_ be some way that you can stop this. None of us can live with this.”  
  
“We must, Potter,” said Professor Snape. His mouth had twitched to the side in an odd way that Draco had never seen before, but even as Draco watched, it relaxed. Professor Snape had been a spy, he knew that now. There was no other way he would have rushed between the Dark Lord and the small lot of Slytherin students and tried to rescue them. But Draco had never suspected it during the war. “I told you, there is no way to break a bond like this once it is established.”  
  
“Zabini went to the centaurs,” Potter said. “And Healer Kislik said she could work on it.”  
  
Professor Snape looked at the Healer. Draco did, too. She had her head bowed, still casting diagnostic spells on Blaise, but Draco could just make out the edge of a smile.  
  
“With all due respect to Healer Kislik,” Professor Snape said, in a voice that made it worse if he had been openly disrespectful, “I do not think this is a problem that she can change. Nothing _can_ be done except to live with the bond.”  
  
“But Zabini wanted to make a bargain with magical creatures he distrusted and attack me rather than live with it,” Potter insisted, taking a step forwards. “You feel like you would rather die than live with it.”  
  
Professor Snape’s eyes fixed on Potter, and there was something else there Draco had never seen. The next instant, the professor had looked at Draco and Pansy as though they were doing something wrong by standing so close.  
  
“Leave us,” Professor Snape said, and his voice was more terrifying than the Dark Lord’s when he spoke Parseltongue.  
  
Pansy fell back a step, with a whimper. Draco reached out to take her hand and said, “But this is about us, too. Potter’s right. None of us want it. Why should you be left alone to talk about it, just because you hate it more?”  
  
“I have some experience in living through this, and you do not.” Professor Snape had gone white to the lips. “ _Go_.”  
  
Draco might still have stood there and tried to force things—they didn’t even know for sure if Blaise was going to be all right yet—but Pansy tugged on his hand again, and made him move. Draco went with her, but still watched over his shoulder as Professor Snape and Potter faced each other. Yes, the professor was white. He reached out one hand as though he was going to clap Potter on the shoulder, weirdly, then pulled it back again and said something in a low, furious hiss that Draco couldn’t make out. Potter nodded. Professor Snape stalked off towards a staircase, and Potter followed.  
  
Draco sighed and turned around again. He reckoned he should go find his parents anyway, and reassure them that he was still alive and Potter hadn’t forced him into becoming his servant, the fate that his mother in particular seemed to be afraid of.  
  
 _I just want to know what’s going to_ happen.  
  
*  
  
Snape turned around when he got the door of the Charms classroom shut. Harry glanced around, saw the dirty stain low down on one wall that he knew very well from the color was dried blood, and decided that he would rather not look anymore.   
  
“How did you know?” Snape’s voice was soft.  
  
Harry wanted to cover the shield mark with his hand again, but he thought Snape would probably kill him if he did that. He didn’t know how to answer. He had spoken what he thought the blackness swaying in the back of his head, the dark candle flame that represented Snape, felt like, not—  
  
But Snape had taken him literally.  
  
“You _do_ want to kill yourself,” he said, and he didn’t know how to interpret the softness of his own voice.  
  
“You can, of course, order me not to.”  
  
Snape’s eyes were wide and black and glinting like oil. Harry flinched before he could stop himself.  
  
Snape, unlike Zabini, didn’t use that moment of weakness to cast a spell on Harry. He merely sneered and turned away, pacing in a slow circle while staring at the walls as though they would tell him something they wouldn’t tell Harry.  
  
“I won’t—I won’t do that,” Harry managed to croak. He coughed and cleared his throat and started over stronger. “What I mean, sir—”  
  
Snape turned around. Harry recoiled at the look on his face.  
  
“Do not call me by that title again,” Snape said. “It is a meaningless mockery when I can have no authority over you.”  
  
Harry nodded, but found his voice. “What am I supposed to call you, then? ‘Green pinpoint on the left’ doesn’t have a real ring to it. And professor is another title.”  
  
Snape looked at him as though he had never expected the question. Then he said, “Severus will do. If you must.”  
  
Harry resolved quietly that he would keep from using the name if he could, except when Snape wasn’t around, and then said, “Look, I need—I don’t want you alive because I hate you and I’m trying to take charge of your life. I need you alive because you’re the one who can help the others the most.”  
  
“Ah, yes, the role of the sacrifice is one to which I am well-accustomed,” Snape said, and his smile was jagged. “Although I _did_ hope to someday play the role in which I do not teach others to lay their necks on the chopping-block.”  
  
“Well, then help me find a way to get rid of this—”  
  
“There _is_ no way to get rid of this!” Snape crossed the ground between them with a long stride, staring at him. “Do you not _understand_? There is no way to destroy a normal Lord-bond, and this is _not normal_.”  
  
“Then help them learn to live with it!” Harry shouted back, stepping up to Snape. He didn’t know who was more surprised, Snape or him, but he plunged ahead before he could think about it, because that was when he did the best work. “I nearly killed Zabini today. I might have. I’m not good at this, I know I’m not good. I’ve been a sacrifice and a hero and a fighter and a Chosen One, but I’ve never had to _rule_ like this. Help me learn to keep my temper and test the limits of the bond! Hermione’s already said it’ll be a little weird, and there’s things that aren’t—they don’t make sense, like the way I can sometimes sense you and sometimes can’t. So help me learn to be a good Lord. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to kill you. Help the others learn to live with this.”   
  
Then he stopped, because Snape was staring at him with hooded eyes and he knew they hadn’t been the right words. Harry thought a minute, head hanging, quicksilver feelings that weren’t his own still darting through him.  
  
“No,” he said after a second, lifting his head. “Help them learn to _live_.”  
  
And while Snape still studied him as though Harry was a Potions ingredient gone rotten, Harry knew they had been the right words by the way the light in Snape’s eyes grew sterner and more open, and by the feeling in his own heart, like a key fitting a lock.  
  
 _That has to be it. If we really can’t get out of this, then it’s not going to be just a matter of me keeping my temper. They could still get in trouble for hurting someone else and force me to punish them that way._  
  
 _We’ll work together. We don’t have a choice. We’ll keep it going._  
  
 _And if I’m good enough, then maybe someday it’ll be like they’re free._  
  
*  
  
Severus did not move or speak for long moments, until he felt he could nod acceptance of what the boy in front of him had proposed.  
  
He did not wish to discuss his own desire for suicide any further. He did not wish to discuss what Potter thought the bond would mean to Severus, because it could never mean anything but slavery and entanglements with Potter, when he had thought he had finally paid the long debt owed.  
  
But that it might mean less than a completely miserable life for the students whom he had tried to protect was a chance he was willing to grab for.  
  



	5. Healer Interrogations

  
“Is he going to be all right?”  
  
“He’ll be fine. No thanks to you.”  
  
Harry swallowed. He had known, when Healer Kislik herded him into the infirmary immediately after he came out of the conversation with Snape, and took him to Zabini’s bedside, that she hadn’t come to congratulate him, but he hadn’t thought it would be this harsh. He folded his elbows into his hands and turned to face Kislik, who had shut the door of the infirmary and performed a few complex locking spells on it.   
  
“The bond wouldn’t let me stop hurting him until I said I forgave him,” he whispered.  
  
“I know,” Healer Kislik said, and turned back to Zabini. Harry looked with her. He looked small and still, his chest rising and falling so slowly that Harry had to watch for almost a minute to convince himself he _was_ breathing.   
  
“He hasn’t woken up yet?” Harry asked.  
  
“No.” Healer Kislik turned her head slowly. Harry flinched from her gaze. He reminded himself that she wouldn’t _hurt_ him. That would be a violation of her oath as a Healer. He squared his shoulders and prepared to continue facing up to his new responsibilities. Snape had gone down into the dungeons to speak with Malfoy and Parkinson, and see if Goyle would come out of his room. This part of it was something only Harry could do.  
  
“You caused him nerve damage when you burned him,” Kislik said quietly. “It will heal, because it was magical damage alone, and you forgave him.” Her lips curled around the words. Harry didn’t look away. It was hard, though. “You _must_ see that being Lord of these Slytherins is not the proper thing for them, that they need their freedom.”  
  
Harry nodded. Even the ones he was sure would face trials for being Death Eaters, like Snape and Malfoy, would do it better if they weren’t tied to him and he could testify for them freely.  
  
Ignoring the bubbling-lava feeling in the back of his mind that said they were _his_ and he had to protect them, not let them go unprotected into their trials, he asked, “But what can I do? Everyone seems to think there’s no way that I can break the bond.”  
  
Healer Kislik leaned forwards. This time, he was the recipient of the shark-smile that she had given Hermione, and Harry had to admit it was no more comfortable for him than it had probably been for her. “Who told you that? People under the bond. And people not under the bond, but who don’t necessarily know much about the bond magic.”  
  
Harry blinked. It was true that Hermione had _just_ looked up the information on the Lord-bonds when she spoke to him, and while he trusted her, she might not know much about it yet. And the others… “Are you saying that being under a Lordship bond affects what they can tell me? What they know?”  
  
Kislik took a seat beside Zabini’s bed and leaned back, shaking her head a little. She kept her body as a barrier between him and Zabini. Harry licked his lips and forced down the twisting threads of color and emotion in the back of his brain that weren’t him, and would _never be him_. “You are smarter than I thought you were, considering you never once considered there might be another option.”  
  
“I only thought that because people kept telling me there _wasn’t_ ,” Harry snapped back. At least he thought this flare of temper was his own. “I thought Zabini’s centaur idea had merit, but I never would have thought of it myself. I don’t want to be a Lord, though. If there’s another way, tell me and I’ll do it.”  
  
Kislik continued to examine him as though wondering how sincere he was being. Harry glared back at her, silently daring her to find fault with his determination to get free. Of course he wanted his life to go back to what he thought it would be, with people to mourn and people to talk to and people to testify for, but no one to _rule._  
  
And maybe then he could go to Ginny and explain the truth, and understand the fear in her eyes, and how he could cure it.  
  
Finally, Kislik said, her hair swirling around her as she shook her head, “You might not have thought of this because you do not have a Healer’s training.” Harry nodded a little, accepting that as the best apology he would get. “But magic is like anything else that you can use, any part of your body,” Kislik continued, her voice rising a little. Then she glanced back at Zabini and lowered it. “If you don’t exercise a muscle, it atrophies. When wizards live away from our world, among Muggles, and don’t use their magic, it is never as strong as it was if they _do_ come back. If you don’t exercise the Lordship bond, it will begin to fade. There have been examples in the past, one I assisted in myself five years ago, where the bond became so weak after a time of the Lord—well, Lady in this case—not using her power that the next time she tried, it snapped.”  
  
Harry thought about that. It made sense, as far as he could see, although he was hardly an expert on magical theory. He was sure Hermione could pick all sorts of holes in it.   
  
But he was the one concerned in it, and it seemed that Kislik had some kind of experience that made it more likely her advice originated in reality. He asked, “All right, but how does that deal with the legal aspects? Hermione told me I would be legally bound to do things like appear in court and pay fines if they misbehaved.”  
  
Kislik’s eyebrows rose. “You mean, exercised their own free will and their true choice, like the independent human beings they are?”  
  
Harry felt his face burn. He supposed he deserved that. The Lordship bond seemed sometimes to be creeping into his brain despite himself, altering his language and his priorities.  
  
He nodded and said, “Yes. But people on the outside would still expect me to handle the legal penalties, and they could go to Azkaban if I don’t, given some of the things the Death Eaters did. How can I keep from exercising my power then?”  
  
“The legal penalties, you cannot,” Kislik said, shaking her head. “But that has little or nothing to do with the magic of the Lordship bond, the power that carves its way into your hearts and minds, making you think eventually that you have a _right_ to own them, and them think that they have a _duty_ to obey.”  
  
Harry made a face. That did sound like the sort of thing he had been through with the Dursleys, which meant it sounded awful.  
  
 _Is that what’s making Ginny afraid of me? I don’t want to make anyone afraid of me._  
  
“It was imposed by people outside the bond, who sought some way of accommodating the Lords and their vassals under standard legal practice,” Kislik was continuing. “They thought they had to recognize it, because it affected the behavior of everyone concerned.” She sneered. “If they had refused, then perhaps more of those bonds would have been broken before they could become entrenched. The key is not to recognize these bonds, but to weaken and not enforce them.”  
  
Harry nodded. He could see that. And so far, everything she said still sounded like good sense. Maybe it was even the same thing as what he’d been talking about with Snape, the idea of holding the reins so lightly that in the end, his Slytherins wouldn’t think about him or let him affect their lives. He just hadn’t thought that doing that would possibly weaken the bond itself.  
  
 _My Slytherins._ There it was again. Harry shuddered at himself. He would have to watch his thoughts closely, that was certain, or he would never manage to break the bond. The stupid thing was linked directly to his protective instincts, that was the problem, and so it was natural for him to behave this way.  
  
 _But not natural, in the end. Enforced by magic. And even if I would like it, it’s because I wouldn’t have the raw end of the deal._  
  
Harry looked up at Kislik. She wasn’t watching him. Her eyes were on Zabini instead, and her expression was so fiercely tender and protective, itself, that Harry had to ask, “Do you know him?”  
  
“What?” Kislik glanced back at him, as distant as a hawk. In an instant, her lip had curled, and Harry shivered. He was glad she didn’t look at him with the same mindless fear that Ginny did, but being despised that intensely wasn’t much more comfortable. “Oh, no. Of course not. My family has always been Light, and I don’t think that anyone in it was ever Sorted into Slytherin. I was Hufflepuff, myself.”  
  
Harry nodded uncertainly. Kislik leaned forwards, her hands looped over her knees and her voice so soft that Harry thought someone trying to eavesdrop wouldn’t be able to hear her.  
  
“I am an advocate of breaking Lordship bonds and the other unnatural, pernicious forms of slavery that run through wizarding society and which far too many people understand as something to be praised and celebrated. Lordship bonds are not the most common, but they are the ones that the most people think of as good. For years, I’ve fought for victims who can’t speak for themselves, who might be literally unable to lift their voices against their Lords, or who might think they’ve fully accepted it, when really, the magic has the effect of brainwashing.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. Okay, so he didn’t like the way she looked at him, but it made sense. If he was part of that class of people she despised, he was surprised that she could sit that close to him and still speak to him nicely.  
  
“So,” Kislik said. Suddenly she was leaning back from him again, still with her arm on Zabini’s bed. “You think you know how to handle this, and you don’t. You don’t understand what it will do to them, how it’ll carve paths in their minds, the thought of obedience and even the pleasure of being protected. For some people, a lot of people, it’s like that. They start thinking there are enough advantages to being protected that rebellion isn’t worth it.” Her eyes flared wide open, while her fingers clenched in front of her. “It’s _fucked-up_.”  
  
Harry sighed. He understood that. “All right. I agree it is, and I never wanted this, either.”  
  
Kislik considered him again. “Good,” she said at last. “Most people don’t consider it, but this kind of thing deforms the Lords’ souls, too. Free human beings aren’t meant to own each other. You want to be a good person? Then step back, and hope that its hooks aren’t too deep in you already.”  
  
“It’s only been a day,” Harry mumbled.  
  
“More like a day and a half, and it can be enough.” Kislik looked at him for long seconds before she continued speaking. “You can feel it, can’t you? The urge to defend them. The urge to think of them as yours.”  
  
Harry nodded and closed his eyes. “All right. How do I step back from them? How do I—how do I weaken the bond and keep from exercising it?”  
  
Kislik patted his shoulder. Harry opened his eyes to see her holding her hand up, the tip of her wand glowing.  
  
“I’ll show you.”  
  
*  
  
“Gregory, will you _come out_?”  
  
Pansy rolled her eyes and leaned back against the wall of the Slytherin common room, her arms wrapped around her chest. Draco didn’t understand. This had changed everything. He thought he could just command Greg the way he always had, but Vincent had died only yesterday, and the Dark Lord had fallen, and Potter had marked them. They were living in a new world. The old rules didn’t apply anymore.  
  
Which meant that maybe the things she wanted didn’t apply anymore, or she wouldn’t be able to achieve them.  
  
Pansy shut her eyes and gritted her teeth, holding her hands close to her sides. She wasn’t going to think about that. She was going to find some way to have what she wanted in spite of…everything.  
  
Of course, if Potter was so violent that he would do to any one of them what he did to Blaise, then there might be no point. She would slip up and irritate him sooner or later, and he would destroy her.  
  
But thinking like that wouldn’t free her or give her her freedom back. So she stood up straight and opened her eyes gratefully when Professor Snape swept into the common room. He glanced at her, and then turned in the direction of the boys’ bedroom. Draco shouted Greg’s name again, and Pansy nodded at the way Professor Snape’s eyes flashed.  
  
“He keeps trying to _make_ him come out,” she said.  
  
The professor drew his wand and gestured up and down with it in a cross shape. Pansy blinked a little. That meant they could cast spells without the permission of their Lord, then. She had been afraid to try, afraid that she would find herself forbidden.  
  
Draco had mentioned watching Professor Snape brew potions, but that was different. You didn’t need a wand for that.  
  
There was an abrupt sound, and Pansy, listening hard, realized a moment later that it was the door of the bedroom clicking open. A few seconds later, Greg’s heavy footsteps came slowly down the stairs. He paused in the middle of them and stared at Professor Snape, his hands shifting back and forth. It was like he didn’t know if he wanted to cover his left arm or his right one, Pansy thought, watching.  
  
Professor Snape looked back at him in silence. Pansy had never been good at reading his face unless he was trying to communicate something to _her_ , so she didn’t know how he reassured Greg. But a second later, Greg nodded and came the rest of the way down the stairs to sit in the big green armchair he usually took.  
  
Professor Snape turned his head, and Pansy understood the message perfectly well this time. She slinked over and took the small stool to the right of the fireplace.  
  
Draco clattered down the stairs, and paused halfway down, too, although not in the same place that Greg had. Then he walked down with an almost prim demeanor and sat on the chair nearest her.  
  
“I am displeased that we must commence this without the presence of Mr. Zabini,” Professor Snape murmured. He turned and cast a spell on the door of the Slytherin common room that Pansy didn’t know, or at least she didn’t know its effect. It was nonverbal, and the door made a little shivering sound and settled heavily into its frame. Professor Snape nodded and faced them again. “At least we will not be disturbed.”  
  
Pansy folded her arms. She wouldn’t be the first to say something.  
  
Draco was, of course. “Did you come up with something that would let us resist Potter, sir?” he asked eagerly, and almost rose from the chair.  
  
Professor Snape turned to him. Draco looked down at the floor and brushed at an imaginary piece of dust on his sleeve. Pansy decided that she was glad she wasn’t Marked on both arms, even though sometimes it seemed to lead to greater understanding between Professor Snape and Greg and Draco. That understanding didn’t always work to Draco’s benefit.  
  
“We cannot resist him,” Professor Snape said. “But we can use his Gryffindor sensibilities against him, in effect.” He grimaced as if smelling an inferior potion. “He does not desire to rule us.”  
  
“But,” Pansy said, and winced as those black eyes turned to her.  
  
She had spoken, though, which meant she’d already lost whatever advantage being silent would have brought her. She raked her fingers through her hair, because she wanted to do it and she might as well now, and plunged ahead. “I thought the bond would make him rule us whether he wanted to or not. He’ll get more and more possessive. He’ll want to restrict our movements for our own safety. And it’s going to be worse than usual because the whole world is out to get Slytherins and Death Eaters, and he jumped in front of us, so the bond would have interpreted his intent as protective already.”  
  
Professor Snape was staring at her. Pansy flushed and stared back. He hadn’t paid much attention to her before this, except as part of the Slytherin House it was his duty to lead. Well, why should he? She wasn’t brilliant in Potions, which was the only art he cared about, and she hadn’t been a Death Eater, and she hadn’t been horribly good at Dark Arts. All the paths to advancement in his favor were closed to her.  
  
Professor Snape shook his head a little, and then said, “Ordinarily, you would be right. But most Lords do not have a history of animosity with the people they are ruling. That may work in our favor. And most Lords were not Gryffindors, so committed to the ideal of freedom for everyone.” Professor Snape sneered a little, and rubbed at the mark on his right arm. Pansy wondered what he and Potter had talked about in their private conversation. “Potter said that he wants to use the reins loosely. He wants me to—to give you some idea how to live, as well as how to live with it.”  
  
Pansy bit her lip. She knew she would think long and hard about those words, because they landed in her soul like fishhooks, and she always thought hard about the words that did that.  
  
Only yesterday she had wanted to offer Potter up to the Dark Lord, and now he was saying things like _that_.  
  
“I don’t want to live with it at all,” Draco said. “I have _plans_. And Malfoys serve no one.”  
  
“Oh, shut up,” Pansy snapped, because suddenly it was too much, sitting in the middle of all these serious things, and having Professor Snape look at her like that, and having to think about something _Potter_ had said. “Your father knelt at the Dark Lord’s feet. Besides, do you think anyone’s going to be eager to hire you or give you political connections now? Potter can probably do more for you than he can for the rest of us.”  
  
Draco blinked and touched his chin as though she had punched him. Pansy turned around, and she knew she turned absolutely crimson as Professor Snape watched her this time.  
  
“What do you want to do, Miss Parkinson?” Professor Snape asked, when enough time had passed that Pansy had really started to wish that he would look at Greg instead.  
  
Pansy sat up. She had brought this on herself. She would do what she could to live with the consequences of her actions. “I want to go into politics,” she said.  
  
“To pass certain laws?” Professor Snape asked. “To be a power behind the throne?”  
  
“To know everything,” Pansy said, wondering when he would start laughing. “To hear gossip and trace the places it comes from. To pass certain laws, yes, but to have power, and to make sure that no one else could have power over me.”  
  
Professor Snape gave a kind of complicated grimace. “This Lordship will not be easy for you, either.”  
  
Pansy shook her head. “And he probably hates me because I wanted to give him up,” she said, grateful she could tell someone that. She had tried to mention it to Draco, but as always, he was too preoccupied with whining about his own problems.  
  
“He may not,” Professor Snape, his eyes so distant now that Pansy _really_ wished she could have a Time-Turner and go back in time to witness that conversation he’d had with Potter. But Professor Snape shook his head and pushed on before Pansy could regret it too much. “Draco?”  
  
“Finally remembered my existence?” Draco folded his arms and glared.  
  
Professor Snape simply gazed at him. Draco’s arms dropped to his sides and he looked down, shaking his head.  
  
“I owe him a life-debt because he saved me from that fire,” he whispered. “And maybe he owes me one because I told the Snatchers who brought him to Malfoy Manor that I wasn’t sure if it was him. But I don’t know how they interact with a Lordship bond, and I don’t want this, just like you don’t.” He stroked his left arm for a second, then dropped his hand as if he’d been scalded. “Sometimes I was wondering which arm I should cut off.”  
  
“You will do neither,” Professor Snape said crisply. “Lor—Mr. Potter may help to protect you from the consequences of taking the Dark Mark, and I will help protect you from the consequences of the other bond. But you need to think about what you want, about what matters to you beyond the life-debts.” He turned his head. “Mr. Goyle?”  
  
Pansy looked over, and then sat up and stared. She hadn’t felt anything from Greg, the way she had thought she might since they were all in the same kind of bond. But it seemed they were bonded individually to Potter, rather than to each other.  
  
Greg was curled up in the depths of his chair, his arms wrapped around himself, shivering. He opened his mouth, but his teeth chattered together as if he was trying to crack a nut between them. “Vince,” he whispered.  
  
Draco stood up and crossed the floor between them to stand with a hand on Greg’s shoulder. “He was with me when Vince got burned,” he murmured to Pansy, and then knelt down and took Greg’s hands. “I’m sorry for mentioning it, Greg. Really.”  
  
Pansy thought she heard Professor Snape murmur something tired, and he walked over to Greg’s chair and pulled out a thin vial. From the silvery gleam inside, Pansy assumed it was a Calming Draught. When he poured it down Greg’s throat, though, it took Greg forever to unclench. At last he let his head sprawl back against the chair and inhaled deeply, then seemed almost to go to sleep.  
  
“And that, of course, is another complication,” Professor Snape muttered, and turned to Pansy as if he thought she might need one. Pansy just shook her head. Her heart was beating fast, but she wanted to remain fully awake and aware, to see what happened next.  
  
Professor Snape nodded, and glanced back and forth between her and Draco, gathering them effortlessly into his attention, the way he used to do in Potions class. Pansy had the impression he was doing it for Greg, too, although Greg still seemed out of it.  
  
“Now,” Professor Snape said, low and intense. “We will figure out what you want to do with your lives, and you will get to do it. Potter wants to make this as easy on us as possible. He will not get rid of the bond, and neither will we, but we will live with it, or in spite of it. Understand?”  
  
Pansy nodded slowly. She could feel her heart ringing, rising. This might be easier than she had thought, _better_ than she had thought, at least if Potter didn’t blame her for wanting to throw him to the wolves. Potter’s name could be a protection, even a passport to victory in the new Ministry.  
  
It was only a long time afterwards, when she’d started to think of the five of them—six, if you counted Potter—as a team against the world, that she noticed who Professor Snape’s words had left out.  
  
 _We will figure out what you want to do._  
  
 _Not_ what _we_ want to do.  
  



	6. Explosions

  
Harry stepped out of the infirmary, his hand against his forehead. What Healer Kislik showed him had been extraordinarily complicated, even by her standards, he thought. At least, she hadn't shown much impatience when he had to slow down and ask about some parts again. She had performed the incantations and wand movements until Harry thought he could probably do them in his sleep.  
  
"Harry! Where _were_ you?"  
  
Harry started back. Ron and Hermione practically pounced on him as he came around the corner. Hermione's face was pale, and Ron's was red. Harry looked around, automatically assuming that some of the captured Death Eaters must have broken free or something, but the damage he could see to the walls all looked like damage that had been inflicted during the final battle.  
  
"What do you mean?" he asked, turning back to them. "Were you looking for me?"  
  
"We knew you had gone to see to Zabini," said Ron, gripping Harry's arm and feeling around it gingerly as though to make sure he was still flesh and blood. "But when we tried to go in, the door was locked, and no one seemed sure where you had gone after that."  
  
Harry blinked at them in wonder. Then he said, "The Healer was showing me ways I could weaken the bond."  
  
"The _Healer_?" Ron darted the blackest scowl Harry had ever seen him wear for someone who wasn't a Slytherin at the door of the hospital wing. "What does she know about it? Healers don't talk about bonds."  
  
"She said she did," said Hermione, but her face had gained only a little color and she had one hand up in front of her as though she was turning the pages of an invisible book. "She said she worked with the victims of Lordship bonds. But...Harry, what did she _do_?"  
  
Harry scratched the back of his head. "Listen, you don't need to worry about me," he said. "She's done this with people in the past. She showed me a few spells that should help me to separate the part of my mind that's influenced by the Lord bond from the rest, and if I don't have the thoughts that urge me to protect them and make them obey me, then the Slytherins should get to be free on their own."  
  
"Separate parts of your _mind_?" Hermione's voice was soaring, and Harry flinched. He didn't want Healer Kislik overhearing them and deciding that she hadn't done a good enough job, and he didn't want them waking Zabini up. He herded his friends a few meters away from the door and listened to Hermione. "But you weren't good at Occlumency or Legilimency. Is this the same thing? Could it hurt you?"  
  
Harry shook his head. "I don't think so." His friends were staring at him, unimpressed, and Harry sighed. "I know. It's unknown. But this kind of bond is unknown, too. It's at least worth trying a few techniques to try and get it weaker, don't you think?"  
  
He expected Hermione to protest or maybe start lecturing him on the evils of trusting someone he didn't know, and after that, Harry would have retorted that he was trusting _Slytherins,_ and that was worse than strangers. He didn't expect Hermione to march forwards, seize one of his eyelids, and pull it back. Harry stared at her as she stared into his eyes, and then waved his hand at her to get her to let go. Hermione stepped backwards, releasing his eyelid at the same time, and nodded briskly.  
  
"Do you have any idea how _tired_ you still are?" she asked Harry. "Not to mention that it looks like you're partially in shock. You need to go and rest, not think about Healer techniques or Lordship bonds for right now."  
  
Harry shook his head. "But Zabini still isn't awake, and he's going to have nerve damage," he muttered. His vision was swimming, all right, and his hand still shook when he thought about the way he had nearly murdered Zabini, but that didn't mean he could just _go to bed._ What would happen if one of his Slytherins needed him when he was asleep?  
  
"We'll handle it," Ron said, in his gentle "tower of strength" voice. He'd sounded like that when he talked about coming back and trying to find them on the Horcrux hunt. "Whatever it is, we'll handle it." He gave Harry a little shove. "You've been white as Peeves since you came in from the Forest with Zabini. We would have made you go to bed before this, but we thought you needed to talk with people. _People,_ not Healers."  
  
"His victims count as people, too."  
  
Harry knew without turning that the voice belonged to Healer Kislik. He would have turned back and apologized, but Ron pushed him down the corridor, and Harry heard Hermione turning to face Kislik without pausing.  
  
"Harry said that you had used those techniques to weaken bonds in the past," Hermione's voice was saying, sweet and strong. "Can you give me the names of people they worked on? I thought I could look up their situations in the books in the library and see how similar they are to the bond Harry is in. That might give us even more ideas about getting both him and the Slytherins free."  
  
"Their cases are both within the last ten years," Kislik said. "Too recent to be in most books."  
  
"In back files of the _Daily Prophet,_ then," Hermione said, and her voice had deepened to what Harry recognized as a dangerous point. "Their names?"  
  
Then Harry and Ron got around the corner, and Harry couldn't hear Hermione anymore. He shook his head and glanced at Ron out of one eye. His swimming vision had stabilized a little, but he had decided it was still a good idea to go to bed, if only because people would probably need him later. His Slytherins. People who wanted to arrest his Slytherins and would need him to explain. _Ginny_.  
  
"She's scary, mate," Harry said.  
  
"Of course she is," Ron said, and his voice was smug and pleased and proud. "Especially when she's defending one of her best friends from someone who wants to take advantage of him."  
  
"Wait? Take advantage?" Harry put a hand to his aching head. The symptoms had come on so _suddenly._ He wondered if Hermione had managed to suggest them so strongly that he had just started taking them over. "Why would Healer Kislik want to take advantage of me? I don't have anything she wants. Quite the opposite," he added, thinking of the way she had crouched in front of Blaise like an enraged dragon.  
  
Ron studied Harry with one eyebrow raised. "You really don't understand why?" he asked. "When you're the savior of the wizarding world, the Defeater of Voldemort, an accidental Lord, and someone with more power than he knows what to do with?"  
  
Harry could feel heat like a blush on his face. He reckoned it might be a fever, though. Stupid Hermione and her sickness-causing words. "Okay, fine. But she seemed to--I don't know, she seemed to hate me. I don't think she would want anything from me."  
  
"All the more reason for her to try to get something," Ron said, but sighed and shook his head when Harry opened his mouth to argue. "You're also probably sick and delusional. Magical exhaustion, shock, maybe even heatstroke. Let's get you to bed."  
  
Harry opened his mouth to protest _heatstroke_ , but Ron was already urging him down the corridor, and he went with it. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to let other people handle things for a while.  
  
It was only when he had tumbled ungracefully into bed that he realized he had once again thought of _the_ Slytherins as _his_ Slytherins.  
  
Harry grimaced and shut his eyes. He could feel his brain groping towards the instructions that Healer Kislik had given him for separating the parts of his mind into distinct beings, imprisoning the part of him influenced by the bond and starving it into submission.  
  
But he was too tired to manage it. After a few ineffective pushes against the quicksilver urgings of the bond in his mind, Harry gave in to a different kind of pressure and fell asleep.  
  
*  
  
God, his arm _hurt_ , and spirals of twisting black and gold paraded across the back of his eyelids. What was going on?  
  
Groaning, Blaise brought one hand up to his right arm, somewhat surprised to realize that it was still attached. It didn't seem beyond Potter to have cut it off for Blaise's insolence in attacking him.  
  
 _But then, how would he assert his claim over me?_  
  
Blaise turned his head. He knew the surface beneath him was too soft to have been the leaves he'd been lying on in the Forest, but that didn't necessarily mean that he was somewhere safe. But the walls had the soft white glare of the hospital wing, so that was all right. And someone sat beside his bed, a shadow too tall to be Potter, which might or might not be good.  
  
Blaise turned towards it, grimacing as his arm moved. At least he still had it, but it dragged and pulled in odd ways, and he expected the skin to be as shiny and red-rimmed as sleepless eyes when he looked down at it. It wasn't. Blaise winced. It was almost worse that it wasn't.  
  
"You have magical nerve damage," said the shadow, who bent close enough now for Blaise to make out a female face, and long tumbling waves of hair. "Magic can heal it, but it was a close-run thing."  
  
"What happened after Potter attacked me?" Blaise asked, ignoring the entirely separate flare of pain in his shield mark for the disrespectful way he had referred to his Lord. If Potter wanted to make a big deal of it, he would have to come back and do so. Blaise wasn't going to give in.  
  
The woman slowly smiled and leaned back. Blaise wondered how he could have overlooked before that she wore the brilliant lime robes of a Healer, or the serpentine quality of that smile.  
  
"I am Healer Kislik," she whispered. "And if you are still disposed to struggle for your freedom after Potter inflicted the pain of your bond on you and could not stop it except by forgiving you for your attack, then I will support you."  
  
Blaise understood, with his mother's voice murmuring in the back of his mind. _Sometimes you will find someone who genuinely believes you to be a victim, because of your age or my reputation if nothing else. Such pity is not offensive. It is a weapon. Take advantage of it and use it when you find it, instead of immediately repudiating it by displaying your pride and strength._  
  
Blaise had never met someone like this before, immediately disposed to be on his side, so he had never had to use his mother's advice before. But now he did, and he widened his eyes and nodded as hard as he could. Let the Healer think him eager and pathetic.  
  
"Teach me how," he said.  
  
*  
  
Severus grimaced and leaned further back in his chair, his hand over his right arm. This was becoming a common occurrence of no little inconvenience.  
  
And this time, he couldn't determine what the bond wanted. There were the sharp spikes of dark pain he had felt when he thought about being disloyal to Potter, but this time, he hadn't. He hadn't even been thinking about Potter for the last three minutes, blessedly, as he worked on a stronger version of a Calming Draught for Mr. Goyle.  
  
And there was a tug that made Severus stand up and cross to the door of his office, expecting to find Potter on the other side.  
  
He wasn't, but when Severus opened his door to reveal the staircase beyond, the pull was suddenly much clearer and stronger, like a sound that wasn't muffled by stone anymore. Severus ground his teeth as he began to walk towards the stairs. What had Potter _possibly_ got himself into between the time he'd talked to Severus and now, not even an hour later?  
  
Because he really had no choice, and it was better and more dignified than fighting, Severus let himself follow the pull. It took him up the staircase, out of the dungeons altogether, up to the entrance hall. He glanced around, and saw no one in particular watching him. There was a clump of Aurors off to the side, but they didn't glance at him, so involved in a heated conversation that Severus slipped past them easily and up the next staircase.  
  
The one that aimed at the hospital wing, Severus thought, rolling his eyes. Of _course_ Potter had done something to himself in the time between when he and Severus talked and now. Because that was the way he ran his world.  
  
It would be the way he ran Severus's world, too, if Severus didn't watch out.  
  
Severus shook his head and made his way to the door of the hospital wing. He could hear voices inside as he got close, but that wasn't unusual. There would be victims from the Final Battle here, now. He was only surprised that he heard two voices, instead of the maudlin gathering of sobbing and wailing that he would have expected to afflict his ears.  
  
He put his hand out and flicked the door open. Why not? There was no need to hide that he was coming from Potter, who had probably already felt him.  
  
But when he stepped into the hospital wing, no Potter was there. Severus blinked and glanced at the nearest bed, the one that held the voices. Well, one voice. Young Mr. Zabini stopped and blinked at him, staring as though Severus had come back from the dead just now instead of yesterday.  
  
Opposite him sat a Healer who came to her feet with a smooth grace. Severus stared at her. The lime-green robes didn't fool him. She probably really was the Healer she said she was now--it would be stupid to lie about that, with other Healers around and the lie so easily exposed--but she had been trained as a duelist sometime in the past.  
  
The Healer bowed to Severus and moved a little to the side. Shielding Zabini, Severus thought. He would have to curse over her shoulder to reach him.   
  
_But she must know that I am the Head of Slytherin House, and have no reason to hurt one of my Slytherins..._  
  
Then Severus's arm burned again, and he grimaced. He wasn't here to protect Zabini at all, was he? Or Potter. Except indirectly.  
  
Yes, accidental Lord bonds could position someone this way. The evidence that they could was extremely limited and sometimes contradictory, but Severus had read enough of the evidence to see the pattern behind it. That did not mean that he welcomed the role the bond was trying to set him up for, or that he would rejoice in what it would mean once he was past this first confrontation.  
  
But the Healer's eyes were darkening on him, and she was gripping her wand, and someone trained as both a Healer and a duelist was not an opponent to underestimate. Severus yanked his attention back to the moment and spoke over her shoulder to Zabini, whose face he could still just see. "If you are wise, Mr. Zabini, you will cease your rebellion against Lord Har--Lord Potter this instant."  
  
Severus would have rolled his eyes at his slip if he was alone. Both versions of that title sounded utterly ridiculous, and he didn't care how much his mark burned, but he would have expected better of himself than to yield to the temptation to use the first one.  
  
"Why should he not be rebellious?" the Healer demanded, stepping forwards. "When his freedom and future have been stolen from him, and he might have a chance at getting them back if he fights?"  
  
Severus studied her a moment. "Hufflepuff?" he asked. A Gryffindor might have uttered much the same sentiments, but a Gryffindor also would have known better than to expect a Slytherin to pay attention to them.  
  
The Healer's wand swung around to focus on him. Severus didn't roll his eyes this time, either, but the test of his self-control was more severe. "What right do you have to question me?" whispered the woman.   
  
"I only wanted to know your House," Severus said blandly, watching Zabini's face. He might be renowned for his expressionlessness among people his own age, but Severus could read the emotions dancing in his face as well as he could read lightning in the skies. Perhaps the bond was helping in that respect. "I hardly think asking it is an insult."  
  
"You made it into one."  
  
Severus nodded a little. "Hufflepuff," he said, and once again focused on Zabini. He might or might be able to do something with the Healer, although if she attacked him, she would find out that someone who had not been trained by a master could still be deadly in a duel. "Mr. Zabini. You should remember that our future legal and social standing depends entirely on our Lord's say-so. You might or might not care more about them than your own, physical life. I do not know. But you have been punished once, and you will be punished again, if you insist on rebelling further."  
  
Zabini opened his mouth, but the Healer sprang in before he could speak. Severus smiled slightly. Let her think it was in contempt of her words. He had smiled because he had seen the way Zabini's throat bobbed as he glared at the Healer's back. Protection or not, he didn't appreciate the way she had interrupted him when he wanted to make his own point.  
  
"He did nothing that deserved punishment," the Healer said, and her eyes glittered with spirit that Severus could have admired if she was spending it in a different cause. "He defended his life, his freedom. How is _that_ worthy of punishment?"  
  
"What spell did you use on our Lord?" Severus asked Zabini this time. If the bond was going to insist on Severus addressing the boy with terms of respect, then better the generic reference than either of the stupid titles.   
  
The Healer turned around, a sign that she didn't know, either. Severus could see more of Zabini's face now, but he wasn't sure that he considered that an advantage, as Zabini's hands played with the sheets on his hospital bed for a second before he said, "The Stopping Charm."  
  
The Healer glared at Severus. Severus ignored her, and asked quietly, "Applied where?"  
  
Zabini hesitated one more time, then touched his right arm as if the phantom pain of his nerve damage still lingered and said, "To the valves of his heart."  
  
Severus closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. There was so much he wanted to say, and he had a hard time choosing. As it was, he heard the Healer drawing in her breath to talk again and said the first thing that balanced on the edge of his tongue. "The bond was trying to kill you when it reacted, do you understand that? And it was the bond that reacted, not _him_. It ended only because he forgave you, because he was concerned about your life." Severus opened his eyes and added, with a part of him that was probably influenced by the bond but much more by his own disdain for stupidity, "Though I am not certain _why_."  
  
"Every human life--" the Healer began with another of her trivial commonplaces.  
  
Severus paid her no mind, never removing his eyes from Zabni as he moved another step closer. "Lordship bonds slaughter the vassals that try and kill their Lords," he told Zabini. "It's the ultimate violation of the rules, the ultimate treachery. Working against their interests earns much milder punishment, especially because the vassal doesn't always know what _is_ in their Lord's best interests without explicit orders. But trying to kill them? The bond only has one way to interpret that, and that's in violation of its promises."  
  
"I didn't want to make a promise to him!" Zabini snapped, both arms folded to hide the mark now. "No one asked me if I did!"  
  
Severus choked on his own rage. The Healer was looking back and forth between them as though trying to decide who was victimizing whom, and it was easy to move past her altogether and stand there looking down on Zabini. Zabini scrambled away until his back was touching the pillow at the head of the bed, and acted as though he was trying to shut down his breathing.  
  
Severus pulled his lips back from his teeth. Zabini whimpered and cowered promptly. Severus rolled his eyes freely this time. And the boy was his bondmate? Severus had not expected great things from Gregory Goyle, who was suffering from trauma as well as his inherent dimness, or from Draco, who would have a most profound fit of the sullens at becoming part of something other than his family--at least until he figured out that Potter was taking the protective place that his parents had once held. But he had dared to hope that Parkinson and Zabini might not be much trouble, an impression only increased by Parkinson's unexpected demonstration of intelligence earlier today.  
  
Now...  
  
"You think _you_ have been treated unfairly, Mr. Zabini?" he whispered, and shook both sleeves back, lifting his arms to bare the silver shield of Potter's bond and the twining, ugly serpent of the Dark Mark. Zabini tried to look at one and then the other, and ended up shutting his eyes. Severus sneered, only a little sorrowful that there was no one there to appreciate it but the Healer. "Try being Marked twice. Try laboring under _multiple_ Unbreakable Vows and killing the one man who might have been able to provide some kind of escape. Try _serving_ that man and knowing that even the death of the Dark Lord would not free you from this service, because some submissions to leadership last beyond one's life. Try surviving, unexpectedly, and being required to submit to yet another bonding, yet another claiming, yet another lifetime of service." He heard the Healer saying something about him not being required to submit, but Severus didn't bother to glance at her, boring with all his strength into Zabini's stubborn head. "And then try to have the bond manipulating you into the Lord's Shield."  
  
Zabini lifted his right arm and blinked at it.  
  
Severus shook his head. "Some Lordship bonds, especially those to a limited number of vassals, work by manipulating the subordinates into certain positions relative to the Lord," he said. His voice made Zabini look at him, and although he whimpered, he did not close his eyes again. "The Lord's Shield is one of those. Basically, I am in charge of making sure that the rest of my _fellow idiots_ don't do something that would cause harm to their Lord when the Lord isn't present to deal with it himself. It seems that what distresses _our_ Lord the most is having to discipline his vassals. There is no other reason that I would feel, not his pain and desire for aid, but your own misguided attempt to rebel once more. I will tell you this: _Do not tempt my wand._ If you think the pain that the bond inflicts is bad, then you do not want to taste mine. Because I may not have as deep a connection to you as Lord Potter does, but my magic _will not stop_."  
  
He held Zabini's eyes for some seconds more, until Zabini bowed his head. Not submitting to Potter, Severus was certain of that. But submission to fear of Severus would certainly do for now.  
  
He turned and stalked out of the hospital wing, ignoring the Healer's attempt to corner him. Whether she was going to accuse him of evil complicity in the bond or of being a victim who just needed counseling, he didn't care.  
  
Severus paused in the corridor outside the infirmary and waited. There was no tugging on the bond now, but rather a soft, gentle pulsing in the back of his mind. Wherever he was, Potter was smiling, a trouble that he hadn't exactly sensed leaving him.  
  
Severus rolled his eyes one more time as he turned back to the dungeons, and ignored the certainty, not coming from the bond but from his own understanding of things, that Potter would have preferred him to handle Zabini in a different way. He might have to be his Lord's Shield, but he would make the shield out of Dark magic and bad temper, not bleating Gryffindor mercy.  
  



	7. The Changeover

  
Draco stared as Professor Snape walked back into the Slytherin common room with the bubbling potion in his hands. He had thought it would take him longer than that to make a more effective Calming Draught, but perhaps he had underestimated how good the Professor was at Potions.  
  
It was more than that, though, Draco decided, after a cautious study of Professor Snape's face. He moved as though someone had been hurting him, a kind of movement Draco was really familiar with after being the Dark Lord's torturer. His hand on the potion shook once as Draco watched, then firmed.  
  
 _Did Potter do this to him?_  
  
Professor Snape turned towards him as he had the thought, and his eyes narrowed. Draco flinched. Could he really Legilimize someone from _across the room?_ Or maybe Draco's thought had just been that loud.  
  
"Listen to me carefully, Draco," Professor Snape whispered. "I have already informed Mr. Zabini. You are _not_ to go around planning rebellion against our Lord and planning to kill him, you understand? Because the bond is maneuvering me into a position as Shield where I can feel such thoughts and will have to protect Potter. I do _not_ enjoy such feelings. Do you understand me?"  
  
Draco had to ask, because it seemed so incredible. "Is that really what Blaise tried to do to Lord--Potter?" Damn it, he had wanted to speak Potter's last name without the title, but it really wasn't worth it, with the sharp jab in the back of his mind. "He tried to kill him?" He'd suspected that, but it was different having it confirmed.  
  
Professor Snape studied him, and then inclined his head. His irritation had stopped rising off him like steam, which Draco reckoned was a good thing. "He did. He was not intelligent enough to realize it was the bond that would retaliate to any attempt to kill off his Lord, not Potter. Potter is _distressed_ by the effects." Professor Snape sneered the word. "I may have to fend off any future attempts by other vassals to manipulate _him_ , or plot against him. I am not _enthusiastic_ about the prospect of herding you like children for the rest of my life." Draco had seen the professor pinch his nose before, but never as strongly as he did then.  
  
Draco stood up straight. He didn't wish to be thought a useless child, and after listening to Pansy earlier, and the way Professor Snape had responded to her, he thought that Professor Snape might be seeing him that way. "I won't give you cause to worry about me," he said, as strongly and calmly as he could. "Don't worry. No matter what. I can--I can live with this, and carry the burden. Maybe even help you."  
  
Professor Snape looked at him the way that someone would who doubted him. Draco almost snapped something, but held it back. That was what a child would do, not an adult.   
  
He held in the words, and Professor Snape ended up nodding and then saying, "Perhaps you can, at that. I do not yet know if all of us will hold different positions in the bond, or perhaps they will change depending on the circumstances. If they change..." He contemplated Draco in silence so sheer that Draco found himself holding his breath, and then said, "I do not expect your resolution to last. But in the meantime, you may visit Mr. Zabini in the hospital wing. There is a Healer that has been speaking with him."  
  
"Healer Kislik?" Draco asked.  
  
Professor Snape made a dismissive gesture with one sleeve. "I do not recall. But she has been filling Mr. Zabini's head with dangerous nonsense about a vassal's right to rebel." Draco winced a little as he felt a sharp twinge travel down his spine. That was the bond, but it felt as though it had come from the stem of his own brain. "I wish to know what she said to him, other than the nonsense she repeated to me. What she might have told him to do."  
  
Draco nodded, and watched as Professor Snape went up the stairs to the bedroom he shared-- _used_ to share with Greg and Blaise and Theo and Vince.  
  
 _Vince_.  
  
Draco dug his fingernails into his palms. He could still see Vince burning if he closed his eyes and concentrated on it, but that was all the more reason not to fall victim to such weakness. He was not a child. He was not someone the professor would have to take care of, like Greg.   
  
But there was only one way to prove his independence and his usefulness, and oddly enough, it came from doing what he was told.   
  
Draco chuckled grimly under his breath as he crossed the common room towards the door. If he had to do that, he could do that. Even Professor Snape had never despised what Draco could do when he put his mind to it, only the _particular_ things Draco had done. He had succeeded in bringing Death Eaters into the school, hadn't he?  
  
The bond rang like bronze in the back of his mind, making Draco flinch. Probably because that action had hurt his Lord.  
  
But it meant he had the will and the determination, and although he really wanted to sit back and let someone take care of him, he knew what his father would say to such a thing, how Professor Snape would look. If he played his cards right, maybe he would have someone to take care of him later.  
  
*  
  
"It's _midnight_?"  
  
Harry sat up in bed, pinching his own ears and trying to shake the feeling of cotton wool out of his head. He couldn't believe what Hermione had said, but then, he had felt this awake at this hour of the night before. Just more usually because he'd been excited about sneaking around after clues to Hogwarts's mysteries, not because he'd slept most of the day.  
  
Hermione, swinging her feet primly beside him, gave a little sniff. "Yes, it is. And I think you needed the sleep."  
  
Harry shut his mouth on the criticism he'd been about to make, and sat up more instead. "Is there any food here? I'm starving."  
  
"Right," Ron said, in an emphatic voice that said he recognized the need for food better than Hermione did, and handed over a metal tray laden with bangers, toast, small sandwiches, cheese, and other odd mixtures of lunch and breakfast foods. Harry didn't care. He grabbed the fork off the side and started eating.  
  
"We should talk about what Healer Kislik suggested," Hermione said. Harry saw that she had a rustling pile of newspapers under one arm, and a book beside her on the bed. She was looking at him with burning eyes, the way she always did when she had a new investigation to start.  
  
Ron laid a calming hand on Hermione's arm. "Let Harry eat. You found out enough about her to show she wasn't what we thought she was, right?"  
  
Hermione nodded and dug into the papers while Harry dug into his bangers. Harry kept his head down and rubbed his right arm cautiously against the side of the tray. At the moment, there was no feeling in the shield mark, not pain and not fire. He hoped that was a sign that Zabini was still okay, and that no other Slytherins needed him right now.  
  
"I found that there _were_ two cases of weakened Lordship bonds in the last ten years," said Hermione, and read aloud from an article that looked like it was on the front page, although Harry couldn't see it that well from where he was sitting. "'This publication regrets to report the death of Jacinta Moore, commonly known as Lady Moore, on the 10th of September. Lady Moore's vassals attended the funeral.'"  
  
Harry blinked. "All right. So what?"  
  
Hermione stared levelly at him. "So she was fifty, which is no age at all for a witch, and her health was great. She'd been working with a program called the Freedom Fighters, though. It seems they were a mix of Healers and Potions masters and former Aurors. They wanted to weaken Lordship bonds and set the vassals free."  
  
"What did she die of?" Harry said, and then quickly stuffed his mouth full as Ron shook his head at Harry, admonishing him for starting an argument with Hermione this way.  
  
"A heart attack," Hermione said.  
  
Harry shrugged. "Well, I'll watch out for any."  
  
Hermione leaned forwards. "This next article," she said, pulling out another _Daily Prophet_ from beneath the first one and unfolding it with a sound like a gunshot, "says that she first had heart trouble when she was working with the Freedom Fighters. That was two years before her death. Never before that. What does that sound like to you?"  
  
"That someone killed her?" Ron offered, leaning to look at the paper over Hermione's shoulder. "Maybe one of them used a spell on her like the one Zabini tried to use on Harry." He shot Harry a disgusted look. "Zabini tried to kill you, and you're still defending him," he muttered. "You were more rational about Voldemort."  
  
"Voldemort made the choice to come after me and mark me," Harry snapped, since his mouth was free. "Zabini didn't choose to be marked."  
  
"I don't think it has anything to do with murder," Hermione said. "Unless you consider that a Healer can murder someone by giving them the wrong potion when they don't know someone is allergic to it, and can't be bothered to research enough to find out. _I_ think it sounds like that. Lady Moore had been a Lady for twenty years. That was enough to change both her body and brain to accept the bond."  
  
"Then you shouldn't be worried about me, since I've been bonded for only a day and a half," Harry said, and stabbed his fork into a sandwich. Then he put down the fork and picked the sandwich up in his fingers, because Ron was shaking his head at him again, and angry at Hermione or not, there were right ways and wrong ways to eat a sandwich.  
  
"It says that they were working with her to teach her certain techniques to separate the part of her mind that considered her vassals _hers_ off from the rest," Hermione said. "And that was when she first experienced heart trouble, when she mastered them."  
  
Harry put down his fork and raked his fingers through his hair. If he thought about it, he knew that his friends were only trying to help him.  
  
But Healer Kislik had said the same thing. And Harry hadn't known her for a long time, but he couldn't mistake that passion to help the Slytherins.  
  
 _Does she want to help you?_  
  
The voice might have been Snape's, although Harry didn't think it was. He took a deep breath and turned to Hermione. "How could spells that affected the mind cause a heart attack?"  
  
Hermione peered directly at him. "Are you agreeing that that _might_ be what happened?"  
  
Harry licked his lips and nodded. "All right, I am. But Healer Kislik didn't give me any names."  
  
"She did me." Hermione smiled smugly and unfolded the paper over her knees. "You have to understand, Harry. I do think that she wants to free people from Lordship bonds, and most of the time, I would agree with her. But that was before I did research on Lordship bonds." She shook her head, eyes dark and lip caught between her teeth. "It's not like house-elves, where only one person is affected. The Lord is affected, too. Or the Lady," she added prudently. "The bond sinks into you and _changes_ you."  
  
"Then maybe the Healer is right and it's a disease," Harry countered at once. He could still hear Healer Kislik's voice shaking as she explained to him what he could do to section off the parts of his mind that would demand obedience and protection from his vassals. "We can cure it if we try hard enough."  
  
"If the cure kills you, what good is it?" Hermione closed her fingers ruthlessly in the sheets of his bed. "The other Lord whose name she gave me died, too. One day there was a story in the papers about how he was hoping to release his vassals soon and one of them had got away with rebelling against him, and the next day he was dead."  
  
Harry held out his hand. "What was his name?"  
  
"David Arland," Hermione said at once, and extended one set of papers towards him. Harry scanned the articles quickly. Yes, it looked exactly as Hermione had said it did. The paper carried a photograph of David Arland, an older wizard with a long grey beard that he wore tucked into his belt. The first article said, _REVOLUTIONARY LORD SEEKING TO FREE VASSALS._  
  
And then there was the notice of his death, a few days later, although not on the front page, maybe because it wasn't so dramatic. A heart attack, just like the one that had killed Lady Moore.  
  
Harry laid the papers down and closed his eyes. "I don't _want_ them," he whispered.  
  
"I know, mate." Ron put a hand on his shoulder.  
  
"But I don't want--" Harry shifted restlessly. It had sounded so seamless, so necessary and harmless, when Healer Kislik explained everything. And he didn't think she'd lied, not really. She knew enough about the subject to sound great and convincing.  
  
 _But maybe she convinced herself along with everyone else. And I don't want to be convinced and humored and treated along as though I was this little kid who knew nothing about anything. I want to make my own choices. If I have the Lordship bond, then I can still do it. I put up with the Dursleys and Voldemort for all those years._  
  
Harry had to shake his head, though. Those two situations, he'd always planned to escape. People had been encouraging him to believe he could defeat Voldemort almost the minute Harry learned about him, and Harry had known he could move away from the Dursleys when he was an adult, even before he knew he was a wizard. The Lordship bond might always be with him.  
  
So it went back to the discussion he'd had with Snape, about helping the Slytherins to achieve what they wanted and live under the bond. No miraculous solution. Harry was reluctant to let go of that possibility, but if it came down to who to trust, Hermione or Kislik, there was no contest.  
  
"Can you keep researching?" he asked Hermione, knowing his voice was heavy. "If there's something out there on breaking accidental bonds, I'd hate to _miss_ it because I thought it was impossible and gave up looking."  
  
Hermione gave a quick nod, her hand pressed against his back. "I'll do everything I can, Harry. I just don't think Kislik's spells are the answer."  
  
 _Maybe a kind of answer._ Harry tucked one chance into the back of his mind. The articles hadn't said that the Lord's and Lady's vassals died, just them. If it ever got to the point where Harry just couldn't do it anymore, and he wanted to see the Slytherins free...  
  
But his life seemed lighter to him because he had been so close to giving it away in the Forbidden Forest. Hermione would probably tell him to wait and think about it, and that was a good idea.  
  
"Let me finish this," he said, picking up his tray of food again, "and you can tell me what else has happened in the last few hours."  
  
*  
  
Draco tensed a little as he knocked on the door of the Defense classroom. He'd had to watch his classmates cursed here throughout most of the year. But it also made sense as a sanctuary, he had to admit. The corridor was thick with Dark magic. Not a lot of people would be looking here.  
  
The door opened, and his mother's slender hand beckoned him in. Draco ducked inside quickly and heard the door shut, the Inviolate Charm springing up on it again, a charm that wouldn't even let anyone who had been outside the room when the spell was cast _think_ of the door.  
  
The classroom had other charms shimmering around it, Draco saw when he had the chance to look. Far more than had been there the last time he saw his parents, early that morning. Delicate, arching webs of wards seemed to have turned the high walls to ice. The sole window in the classroom bore enough defensive hexes to dim the glass. And the chairs his parents had decided to use bore both conjured cushions _and_ defenses so deep they might as well have been inherent to the wood.  
  
Draco nodded, understanding. The situation had gone so volatile in a matter of hours that his parents had no choice. They didn't know whether Aurors would arrest them or Lord--fine, _Lord_ Potter would speak up for them, and until they had more information about which way to jump, they would rather protect themselves.  
  
"What news do you have?"   
  
Draco drew himself up. He might have someone else to report to now, but his father had been his first and youngest source of awe. Seated on a simple wooden chair, Lucius could still make it look like a throne.  
  
"I know that Zabini's in the hospital wing for rebelling against our Lord," he said. He had to drop his eyes to the floor, because the expression on his father's face when Draco spoke of Potter wasn't bearable. "And a Healer has tried to persuade both Zabini and Potter that they can break free of the bond."  
  
"Is there any merit in such stories?" It was his mother who asked, coming to stand behind Lucius with her hand on his shoulder. Draco looked closely at her and saw how white her face was, how her hand trembled. He couldn't despise her for that, though. He felt much the same way. He thought the only reason no one had noticed was that all the other Slytherins in his year had their own problems with the bond.  
  
 _Professor Snape might have noticed, though. And maybe Potter, if he ever paid attention to me._  
  
The burn of old resentment calmed and grounded Draco, and he was able to shake his head. "Professor Snape doesn't think so. Zabini was guarded with me, but I don't think he believes as much as he wants to. Professor Snape almost took his bollocks off for trying to get out of the bond."  
  
"Severus?" Lucius's eyebrows rose. "Interesting. If there was one person alive who did not want to serve under the Potter boy, I would imagine Severus would be the one."  
  
Draco drew in his breath in anger, and then shut his eyes and bowed his head between his arms. He could hear Narcissa's quick step in his direction, and the shuffle as she stopped. Draco knew Lucius would have caught her with a look, as effective as a touch.  
  
"What is it, my son?" Lucius's voice was as smooth and calm as moonlight.  
  
"It makes me angry when you speak of him that way," Draco mumbled, eyes on the floor. It was covered with a sharp sheen that Cleaning Charms left when applied to dust. Draco tried not to look at the trace of blood that had appeared when the Carrows tortured one of the Hufflepuff first-years months ago. "He's my Lord. I know that you despise him, but can you please not talk about him that way?"  
  
Silence. Draco flinched, knowing what would come next: the inevitable speech on loyalty to his family, how it was the highest good, how no Malfoy owed anything else to anyone. Draco had begun to think, during the last year, that that kind of clashed with the way his father bowed to the Dark Lord, but he had had no one to talk to about it, and every reason to pull together with his family during his terror.  
  
Then Lucius stood up from his chair and crossed the floor to stand in front of him. Draco took another deep breath and looked up. Lucius disliked challenges, but he disliked cowardice more. One should know exactly how one would react in any given situation, he had taught Draco, and that meant that Draco had to know his own strengths and refuse to give in to fear. And cowardice was the fear felt by those who did not know if they were equal to the challenges to come.  
  
"Well done," Lucius told him quietly. "That is not an aspect I had considered, and I should have. We will watch our words." Draco saw his mother's face over Lucius's shoulder, nodding, and relaxed with a loud sigh.  
  
"I don't know if _he_ knows anything about the events of the last few hours," Draco said. "Professor Snape sent me to talk to Zabini because he thought it was possible that I could learn more about what the Healer had said to him. But he wouldn't talk to me." Draco frowned a little. Blaise had been _so_ morose and stubborn that it was hard not to wonder exactly what Professor Snape had said to him.  
  
"So you have not seen your Lord today?" Narcissa asked warily.  
  
"I saw him when he came back from the Forest," Draco said. "It turns out that--that Zabini tried to kill him, and the bond responded, and Potter stopped it. Zabini was lucky not to die."  
  
Lucius's hand closed so hard on his shoulder that Draco stared at his father. Lucius's lips were pinched, and he shook his head a few times as though he didn't know what to say, but found the words at last.   
  
"I don't want you to challenge your Lord," he whispered. "We may be able to parlay this into political power if we play it right, but in the meantime, we _cannot_ risk you. Do you understand?"  
  
Draco nodded, glad that he had locked his legs and wouldn't tremble in front of his father. Compulsion to stand aside from obstructing Potter because he was Draco's Lord or not, Draco hadn't looked forward to defining his own position between his identities as Malfoy and as vassal. He _certainly_ hadn't thought his parents would make it this easy for him.  
  
"Oh!" He remembered suddenly, and looked up at his father. "Professor Snape said something about how he was becoming Lord Potter's Shield. That he can feel when someone else is rebelling against the bond and he's in charge of suppressing the rebellion. He said that the bond might put the rest of us in similar positions, but he's not sure yet. That's interesting, isn't it?" Draco couldn't remember hearing of anything like it before, but he had to admit that he hadn't paid that much attention to Lordship bonds before now. What the Dark Lord had with his followers was not the same thing, and it had seemed unlikely Draco would ever be involved in one.  
  
Lucius blinked, but it was his mother who answered, gliding forwards and putting her hands on both his shoulders. Draco smiled into her face. There was no one who loved him as she did, he knew.  
  
"Draco," Narcissa whispered. "Your Lord owes me a life-debt, for saving him in the Forest and lying to _him_ that your Lord was dead." Draco shuddered a little, knowing full-well that his mother meant a different _him_ than Draco did when she spoke. "Use this, and the life-debts you told me that you owe him, to get close to him. It is _imperative_ that the bond give you a good position, that you not be relegated to the outskirts."  
  
"Narcissa..." Draco's father began.  
  
"No, Lucius." His mother did not often speak like that, but when she did, even Lucius fell silent. "This is your life, now," Narcissa told Draco, and shook him a little. "You must live with it, your request to us tells me that. Well, you _will_ live with it. But you will do so in a way that allows you as much power and freedom as possible, do you understand?"  
  
With that, the light broke on Draco, and he thought he might understand, better than any of them--better than Professor Snape with his bitterness and hatred, than Pansy with her broken ambitions, than Greg with his disordered mind, than Blaise with his impotent anger--how to be strong under a Lordship bond.  
  
"Yes, Mother," he whispered fiercely. "You can count on me."  
  
And there was only warmth in his shield mark.


	8. Auror Responses

  
"Mr. Potter, we have to speak to you."  
  
Harry halted in the middle of the staircase and put his chin up, trying to do it haughtily. He could feel Hermione and Ron coming to a stop on either side of him, putting their hands on his shoulders. That should present a more impressive picture, he hoped. But then he remembered something else and arranged his arms so that everyone who was coming up the stairs beneath him could see the silver shield.  
  
The nearest Auror faltered a little, and Harry smiled. He _hated_ that he had to do this, really, to think all the time about how other people would take things and what they would think of him, but it seemed to be connected with the Lordship bond down to its very roots, from what Hermione had told him. Besides, he probably would have had to do it anyway. What the Boy-Who-Lived did and thought was important to the public, too, and Harry wouldn't want to get one of his friends in trouble because he'd ignored basic caution.  
  
"I must _insist_ that you listen to us," said the lead Auror, a tall, burly man in flowing robes with gold trim on them.  
  
"I haven't refused yet," Harry said. He felt Hermione tense beside him, and then relax again. He wanted to snort at her. He had some basic common sense. It included the right thing to say about stupid accusations like the ones the Auror was making. Besides, this was all the sort of thing that Harry would have said to Uncle Vernon and Snape more often if he didn't have to watch his tongue. "Could you tell me your names?"  
  
"Steerforth Umson," said the Auror, with a sigh at the end of the words, as if it was just _too much_ that Harry should want to know his name. "These are my colleagues, Aurors Stephanie McAnders and Hugh Refortson." He waved his hand at the two behind him, a sharp-faced, alert woman and a man so tall that Harry had to keep from shrinking back. "But you need to know that several of your vassals are going to be charged with Death Eater crimes."  
  
 _Here it is._  
  
It was a more severe challenge than Harry had expected to face, and sooner. But he didn't let a muscle change in his face as he said, "Which ones?"  
  
Umson frowned at him. He had bright red-gold hair and blue eyes that Harry might have trusted if he had met them under different circumstances. "What do you mean?"  
  
"Which of my Slytherins are going to be charged with Death Eater crimes?" Harry repeated patiently. "I don't think it's all of them."  
  
Auror Umson drew himself up and folded his arms. "Well, Professor Severus Snape, of course," he said. "I think you'll agree that his crimes committed during his time as Hogwarts Headmaster were simply reprehensible."  
  
Harry smiled at him. "I'll thank you not to assume what I think before I tell you," he said, and Auror Umson looked as if he wanted to fall down the stairs. "Who else?"  
  
Umson hesitated once more. Harry wanted to smirk, except that would have made him look more like a Slytherin than he cared to. _He's not sure who's Marked and who's not. Except that he knows all of them are Marked by me, now, and_ mine.  
  
The word flared in his mind like dragonsbreath, hot and killing. Harry paused and did his best to step back from that. He had to protect his vassals, said the bond that dangled and looped through the back of his mind, but he wouldn't do them any good if he was too angry to pay attention to what his opponents actually said.  
  
"Well, Draco Malfoy, of course," Umson said at last. He was watching Harry's face as if waiting for cues. Harry didn't call attention to that. It would be more fun if Umson realized it on his own. "And Pansy Parkinson, since she wanted to throw you to the Dark Lord."  
  
"Pansy Parkinson doesn't bear the Dark Mark," Harry said, calmly.  
  
Umson rocked to a stop and stood blinking up at him. Then he said, "You would know this, how?"  
  
Harry let his hand rest on the silver shield mark. Warmth flared from it, and for a moment, he thought he saw green lines joining the five green dots that represented his vassals. He didn't know what that meant, but he didn't allow himself to jump in the air the way he wanted to. He looked at Umson and said, "How do I know anything about any of my vassals?"  
  
Umson fell back a small step from him. Harry bowed and took his hand off his shield mark, hoping that the little gesture didn't show how badly his heart was thumping. _I'm standing up to the Ministry. For a bunch of people I don't even_ like.  
  
But they would have to have trials if he didn't defend them, and that would just make everything messier. And the Ministry would probably do things to them that they didn't deserve, if they were ignorant enough to think that Parkinson was one of the Death Eaters.  
  
"I don't understand," said McAnders from beyond Umson's shoulder. "Pansy Parkinson wanted to throw you to You-Know-Who."  
  
"She did," Harry agreed easily, "but she was never Marked by him. That was one reason she was so afraid of him." He paused, but these Aurors had attacked _him_ before they asked anything and accused him of not listening when they hadn't asked a single question. He thought it was time to push. "As you would have known if you thought about it. Voldemort would have _rewarded_ a Death Eater who wanted to deliver me up to him, and she would have been smarter to keep quiet about it instead of suggesting it as a last resort. Then she could have tried later and probably succeeded."  
  
All three of them flinched at Voldemort's name, which Harry had to admit was satisfying. Then Umson said, mounting another step, "But when we find those who have the Dark Mark, we will take them into custody."  
  
"Even knowing I'm their Lord?" Harry felt a sharp wave of something like nausea in his stomach as he said that, but he'd said it, aloud, in public, for the first time. It was violent enough to be nausea, anyway, but hard to characterize. "You know that will involve me having to come and testify for them, and talk about their accommodations. Why are you arresting anyone with the Dark Mark, anyway?"  
  
Umson glared at him. "Why do you _think_?"  
  
"I _think_ that you should be a bit more polite to my Lord."  
  
Harry had felt Malfoy come up from the dungeons, the vibrant, poison-green dot that represented him drawing closer and closer, but he had thought he would lurk in the shadows to see what happened, not speak aloud. The Aurors turned around with jaws dangling as Malfoy walked into the center of the entrance hall. He eyed them all distantly, until his gaze fell on Harry.   
  
Then he bowed, and held up his right arm, where the silver shield gleamed. He was smart enough to keep his left arm wrapped in his sleeve, Harry saw. "My Lord. What are your commands?"  
  
 _Er, right,_ Harry thought, mind gone blank for a moment. But he shook himself and moved down the steps. For a second, he feared the Aurors would stand in his way, but they parted at a sharp word from Umson. He seemed to know the consequences of obstructing a Lord on the way to his vassal.  
  
Malfoy dropped to one knee as Harry came nearer. The sight made Harry's shield mark fill his arm with gentle heat as part of him accepted the submission.  
  
But the rest of him didn't, and he cleared his throat and said, "First, that you get back on your feet. You don't have to--you shouldn't have to do that."  
  
Malfoy took a second to rise, though, and stood with his head bowed when he did. "But what if I want to?" he whispered. "What if I think acknowledging my Lord is the right thing to do?" He darted Harry a glance under lowered lashes.  
  
 _Fuck, he's going to make his obedience as bloody difficult as his rebellion would be, isn't he?_ Harry wanted to close his eyes and walk back to bed.  
  
But that would make things difficult in a different way, so instead, he sighed, nodded, and said, "If you think this is the right thing to do, I don't really mind." Malfoy's smile was really a smirk. Harry decided to ignore it. "But second, did any of these Aurors question you this morning?"  
  
"No, my Lord." Harry was going to want to cut Malfoy's head off if the idiot kept calling him that, he thought, but he knew from all the books Hermione had brought him that it was the proper form of address. So he stood there biting his lip while Malfoy continued. "I heard them talking. They thought to simply arrest me and Professor Severus Snape and have done with it, but then they remembered about the Lordship and your status as Savior. That could make things awkward. Then they decided to speak with you."  
  
Harry stared at him. But there was no sign that Malfoy was lying, and Harry was sure he would _know_ , the same way he had known that Zabini was on his way to the Forbidden Forest.  
  
He turned around to Umson. The tall Auror stood there with his arms folded and his face motionless, but Harry could see the way his hand clenched on his wand, which lay along his left arm right now.  
  
"Do you have _no_ sense?" Harry asked in disbelief. "Everyone keeps telling me how important this Lordship bond is, even though I've never heard of it before, and I need to be careful and act like an adult and make sure I do my best. But you _are_ adults, and people with a lot more experience than me. Shouldn't you know about Lordship bonds? Shouldn't you know that you can't just haul my vassals away to prison?"  
  
Umson turned red. McAnders leaned over his shoulder and said, "It's even more important that Death Eaters are arrested."  
  
"Who decides that?" Harry demanded. He could feel his face flushing up to his ears now, and he knew he probably looked stupid, with his cheeks all red and his hair practically standing on end. But not all of this was the bond. People kept putting him in important positions and then ignoring what they told him was the consequence of those positions. It was the same thing that made them all condemn him as Dark even though he was supposedly also the greatest enemy of the Dark that ever lived. Well, it was inconsistent and hypocritical and Harry was _tired_ of it. "Why did you decide it was more important? Hell, do you even have all the people who served Voldemort out of your Ministry? There were a lot there who were taken over, but others who went along willingly. Umbridge's name comes to mind."  
  
"The Undersecretary to the Minister does not have a Dark Mark on her arm," said McAnders.  
  
"No, she only ran the committee that questioned Muggleborns about whether they'd stolen pure-bloods' wands," Harry snapped. "I'm sure that she's as innocent as I am."  
  
The Aurors paused again. Harry wondered what the hell they'd been expecting. Someone who was meek and compliant? Hearing about the way he jumped in front of Voldemort's curse and the Lordship bond immediately grabbed him should cure them of that. Or maybe they had just thought they would overwhelm him and he would give in because he wasn't sure of the right thing to do.  
  
Luckily, both the part of himself that was really _him_ and the bond were agreed on this. The right thing to do was insist on formal arrests if they were going to make them, and of people who had the Dark Mark, not smuggling people away in the night.  
  
“We should check that young Mr. Malfoy does not have a Mark on his left arm, at least,” said McAnders.  
  
“Then you should _ask_ to check,” Harry said. “The way you would with anyone else. You should give him the same courtesy you’re giving other people. And you need to ask both me and him.”  
  
He turned to Malfoy. Malfoy glanced at him briefly, and then returned his eyes to the floor. He did that gracefully, Harry had to admit. That was another thing that made him want to sigh. Malfoy knew so much more about this than he did, and if he adopted a deferential posture all the way through, then Harry would sort of have to let him get away with that.  
  
“What do you think?” Harry asked. “Do you want them to check your left arm?”  
  
*  
  
Draco wanted to whimper and run away, that was what _he_ wanted to do.  
  
But he reminded himself, with a shiver that seemed to run down his spine, that the Dark Lord was gone, and no one could force him, again, to yield to him. There would be other terrifying things in the future, but they couldn’t carry the same level of terror. There was simply no way.  
  
And he was in public now, not in private in his house or in his bed in Slytherin, where he might get away with acting like a coward. He swallowed and looked up, and said, “I don’t want them to check. But I will let them if you order me to, my Lord.”  
  
Potter’s hair was going to come out of his scalp if he kept tugging on it like that.  
  
He glanced back and forth between Draco and the Aurors, and then swore a little, and said, “Let them check.”  
  
Draco kept his face still as he extended his left arm. He wondered why it mattered to him so much. Everyone involved already knew what they wound find. But it had mattered that he make Potter say that.  
  
 _That’s probably the bond making me do it._  
  
Draco would have shrugged if he was in private with his parents, or even with Potter—a somewhat startling realization. He had to live with the bond, and if he spent the rest of his life trying to pick apart what was “really” himself and what was the subtle influence of the bond, he thought he would go mad. He preferred to see what advantages he could get out of this and acquire those advantages as soon as possible.  
  
The tall Auror, Umson, strode forwards and pushed back the sleeve on his left arm. In doing so, he evidently decided that Draco’s arm wasn’t in a good enough position for him, and shoved it around rather rudely.  
  
Draco winced.  
  
Potter had his wand out in what seemed no time at all, pointing directly at Umson, and his friends had backed him up. As Draco studied them and tried not to seem like he was gaping, Potter said, in a deep, low voice that Draco had never heard him use, “I granted you permission to check his arm. I did not grant you permission to hurt him.”  
  
“He’s hurt others,” said the tallest Auror of all, whose name Draco didn’t remember. “He deserves a slight return on that investment, don’t you think?”  
  
Potter smiled nastily at the tall man and turned his wand fully on him. “And what if I were to demand a return on my investment in saving people? How many Muggleborn victims of the Ministry did you save during the last year, Auror Refortson? I’m waiting for an answer,” he added, as Refortson paused.  
  
 _I’ll remember your name,_ Draco told him, with silent eyes and a sweet smile. _I’m sure that I’ll be able to do something about you sooner or later. My Lord might not block me. He might even help me._  
  
“I have done what I could to help rescue people,” said Refortson. “But you know what the Ministry has been in the past year, and how difficult that was.”  
  
“In the meantime,” said Umson, his eyes fixed on Draco’s left arm where the Dark Mark blazed, “we can arrest young Mr. Malfoy. With your _permission,_ Lord Potter?” His tone made a mockery of the title.  
  
Draco stiffened in Umson’s hold, but he sincerely doubted that Umson had noticed. He noticedd, though, when Potter said, “Where are you going to hold him?”  
  
“In Azkaban, of course,” said Umson. “All those with the Dark Mark deserve at least that measure of confinement.”  
  
Potter sighed. “So you’re going back to the way the Ministry always worked, with generalizations, and a refusal to consider individual cases. Everyone is guilty, and everyone is guilty of the same crimes. That’s what _matters,_ isn’t it? It would be too much effort for you to investigate and decide what Mr. Malfoy has done, and what Professor Snape has done, and what Lucius Malfoy has done.”  
  
Umson straightened, probably realizing how bad Draco’s Lord was making him look. “Of course I would be delighted with specifics,” he said. “But it would take time to round those up and—”  
  
“So you prefer to arrest someone without knowing exactly what they did?” Potter asked in interest. Draco thought he could hear Weasley snicker behind him.  
  
“That’s not what I _meant_ ,” Umson said, throwing a sharp glance over his shoulder at the other two Aurors when they would have said something. “I meant that a Dark Mark is an admission of guilt in the first place, and we can decide what charges to press once we have them safely in custody.”  
  
“Then you must take us as well.”  
  
Draco glanced over his shoulder; he couldn’t turn further because Umson was holding his arm at such an awkward angle. He swallowed when he saw his parents walking up the staircase from the dungeons, although how they’d got there, Draco didn’t know. His father had his arm around Narcissa’s waist, and both of them were pale. But Lucius held out his left arm with a faint smile.  
  
“You can arrest us right away, since we have no Lord to protect us and insist that we be treated with dignity,” Lucius added. “And perhaps we may spend months in the cells before you find the proper charges, but that’s the way that the Ministry works in war, isn’t it? The most efficient method.”  
  
Draco turned around as he felt emotions eddy and churn in the back of his head. He didn’t think they were his own, no matter how much his heart shriveled at the thought that his parents might go to prison. They had come down here of their own free will, which meant that Lucius, at least, must have decided the risk was worth taking.  
  
Granger was whispering fiercely to Potter. Potter raised his eyebrows at her and pointed to the shield mark on his arm. Granger nodded. Potter shrugged and turned around, but not before Draco saw the grin he was working to hide.  
  
“What about releasing them on my word?” Potter asked. “Or at least holding them in cells in the Ministry, rather than Azkaban.”  
  
Umson shut his eyes. Draco felt his lungs rattle with a long breath, since the Auror was still hanging onto his arm. “What do you mean, sir?” Umson asked, his voice low and exquisitely polite.  
  
“It’s just, I’m new at this Lordship business, and my friend Hermione reminded me of something,” Potter said. A new Sickle wouldn’t have outsparkled the innocence in his voice. “She told me that Lords can pledge their word for someone else. Mostly, those are vassals, because he has the power to punish them if they disobey, but they can extend their protection to vassals’ families. So Mr. Malfoy and his family could stay free, as long as I pledged my word to stand surety for them. If they fled the country or cursed someone else, then I would be responsible for that. I could even go to prison myself. What do you think? Is it a good solution?”  
  
 _Not for Umson,_ Draco thought, and had to work to keep his glee off his face. Because if that actually happened, Umson would have to take a chance on arresting the Boy-Who-Lived.  
  
“We would have to discuss exactly what you are promising,” Umson said, after clearing his throat uncomfortably for a few seconds and seeming to wait for Potter to decide that he was joking, “and for whom. And why you are so desperate to keep some of your vassals out of Azkaban.”  
  
Potter abruptly stood straighter, and although he’d lowered his wand while he spoke to Granger, he raised it again now. “Because my godfather endured twelve years in Azkaban, and I saw what it did to him,” he hissed. “And he didn’t get a trial. He got condemned by public opinion. I’m _not_ going to have the same thing happen to people I’m responsible for protecting. Understand?”  
  
Umson nodded, because he couldn’t do much else, really. Other people were starting to wander into the entrance hall, and pausing to stare at the spectacle. Draco couldn’t blame them. Umson probably wouldn’t have started this if he’d thought Potter would object. Obviously, he had expected Potter to jump at the chance to be rid of those awful Slytherins he was bonded to.  
  
“Fine,” Umson said, bowing from the waist as though to a powerful official in the Ministry. Potter accepted it without comment, maybe because he was watching Draco and Lucius. Umson’s mouth tightened, and Draco made a mental note to keep an eye on him. He seemed like the kind of person who wouldn’t take being embarrassed by the Boy-Who-Lived lightly, even if it was mostly his own fault. “We cannot let them go, but we will take them to holding cells in the Ministry instead of Azkaban, provided that _you_ understand you will be liable to go to Azkaban if any of them escape.”  
  
Granger grabbed Potter’s arm at that, and Weasley leaned near him, muttering something about “Dementors.” Draco curled his lip. Yes, _he_ remembered how susceptible Potter had been to Dementors in their third year, but it wasn’t the kind of weakness that you wanted to announce to all and sundry.  
  
“Good,” Potter said. “I’ll stand surety for Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy, Professor Severus Snape, and Gregory Goyle.”  
  
“Any other Death Eaters you want to rescue?” muttered Refortson, shaking his head. Disgust on him was probably more intimidating than it would be from the others, since he was so tall, but Potter just looked at him without much interest and shook his head.  
  
“I think the rest of them wouldn’t be interested in pledging to me even if I was interested in accepting them,” Potter said, and left Refortson there to look foolish because of his foolish question, while he turned back to Draco. “What about you, Malfoy? Will you pledge to remain true to your word and go quietly to the holding cells?”  
  
Draco bowed a little, and said, “I pledge my word.”  
  
“You have mine, as well,” Lucius said from behind him.  
  
“And mine,” said Narcissa, and Draco heard the graceful rustling as his parents knelt.  
  
“Good,” Potter said, staring around in a distracted way. “Now I suppose I only need to find out what Professor Snape and Goyle think—”  
  
“I will answer for Mr. Goyle, who is too traumatized to do it himself,” said Professor Snape. Draco started. He had assumed that he could feel people in the bond the way he was starting to feel Potter, but Snape had once again sneaked up behind him. He was leading Greg by the arm, Draco saw. “We pledge our words.”  
  
He bowed his head, but not before Draco saw him flash a quick and probably ironic glance at Potter. Potter looked back with a faint downturn of his mouth, but nothing more.  
  
Then he stepped up to the Draco and whispered, “Stay strong. I won’t let them hold you indefinitely.”  
  
That should have been far less comfort than it was, but Draco left with a light heart, even turning his head to watch Potter and his friends head in the direction of the Great Hall. The shield mark on his arm pulsed with warmth again.  
  
 _No, having someone who can protect me even after I leave home isn’t all that bad._  
  



	9. Fears and Apologies

  
The Great Hall was still filled with pallets and people sitting at benches with their heads bowed, but there were fewer people than there had been. Harry relaxed a little. Healers had taken the most badly-wounded to St. Mungo’s, and the house-elves were feeding the ones who remained and needed food. That was one thing he didn’t have to worry about.  
  
 _Why should I have to worry about it at all?_  
  
Harry shook his head a little. The Lordship was affecting his brain, he decided. He saw a problem and he started wondering about how to fix it. He had to do that with _some_ people, but only some. He would have to stop exaggerating and just concentrate on his Slytherins.  
  
“Harry!”  
  
That was Mr. Weasley, calling from a table near the center of the Hall. Harry hurried over, glad that they could sit with people they knew.  
  
The crowds on the floor made way for them, of course, murmuring and staring. Harry squared his shoulders. If Hermione was right, he would get stared at more than ever, because he would have to go stand in public and talk about what his Slytherins had and hadn’t done during their trials. If he started acting like a kid now, then people would just think he was being cowardly.  
  
And then they might think they could get away with controlling him, or hurting people he was responsible for. Harry was determined that wasn’t going to happen, with a determination strong and cold enough that he hoped it would freeze the Aurors if he unleashed it on them.  
  
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were the only ones sitting at the table. Harry knew without asking that George would have gone home, because being at Hogwarts was too stressful for him. Harry winced a little as he sat down. He wanted to do something for George, too, but he didn’t know what he could do.  
  
“Have some food, you must be starving,” Mrs. Weasley said firmly, and pushed a heaping plate at him. Harry picked up a few grapes and looked up to say thank you.  
  
He caught Ginny’s eye, and Ginny shuddered and looked away. Harry swallowed the grape and ended up not saying anything. He wondered what the hell was going on with Ginny. She hadn’t acted like that after he got the Lordship bond, only after he brought Zabini back from the Forbidden Forest.  
  
Speaking of Zabini, Harry would have to find him and Parkinson and talk about the rest of them being taken to the Ministry. He suppressed a sigh and picked out another grape. When was he supposed to have the time and privacy to _talk_ to all these people?  
  
“Ginny.”  
  
Harry looked up. It was Ron who had said that, and he was frowning at Ginny.   
  
When Harry looked, Ginny stood with one hand on the back of her chair, frozen and guilty. Harry winced. She had turned from him and tried to creep away, he thought, but Ron had noticed and kept her there.  
  
“I just—I really have to use the loo,” Ginny said, ducking her head until her red hair fell down around her face. Harry watched her and remembered the way she had kissed him on his birthday, the way she had tried to sneak into Snape’s office and steal the Sword of Gryffindor. All the courage and the light and the life seemed to have drained out of her.  
  
 _Did I do that?_ But Harry still didn’t know why or how.  
  
“Then go, for heaven’s sake,” said Mrs. Weasley briskly, and turned around to say something to Hermione. Harry craned his neck to watch over her shoulder as Ginny slipped out of the Great Hall.  
  
 _Maybe you have to take the time to talk to people where you find it._  
  
“I kind of have to go to the bathroom, too,” Harry said, pushing his plate away and standing up. “Will you—will you excuse me?”  
  
Mrs. Weasley smiled at him at once and waved her hand when Mr. Weasley opened his mouth. “Of course, Harry,” she said. “Some people have important things to do.” She sat down and started talking to Mr. Weasley about something to do with the Burrow, maybe the funeral they were going to have there. Harry didn’t stay to listen. He made his way along the wall of the Great Hall, where there were fewer people to stare at him, and into the quiet outside.  
  
There, he had to hesitate, because he didn’t really know where Ginny would have gone, but in the end, he made for the nearest bathroom. He would just check all of them until he found her. He thought it was important that he knew what had happened with her.  
  
*  
  
Pansy climbed the stairs from the dungeons cautiously. She had woken up and found the Slytherin common room deserted an hour earlier, and after knocking and calling on all the bedroom doors, she had to admit that it seemed everyone really was gone. That was silly, of course. Why wouldn’t Greg have stayed there? And Professor Snape wasn’t in his office.  
  
There was a slight pulse of warmth in her shield mark that reminded her of where she could go, but she refused to take her questions to Potter unless she had to. In the end, after sitting by the fire in the common room and considering for twenty minutes, she had resigned herself to going to the Great Hall. People would stare at her and whisper, but she could get food there and perhaps learn what was going on.  
  
When she was just about to take the final step off the dungeon stairs, she felt the warmth pulse along her arm to the elbow. She immediately hid in the shadows, and Potter hurried by a second later. His face was grim, and he looked back and forth as though someone was chasing him. While Pansy craned her neck to figure out what it was, Potter went up the staircase to the first floor, stomping all the while.  
  
 _Maybe I can find out where Draco and the others are by following him._  
  
It was worth a try, and less humiliating than going to Potter to beg the truth. Pansy set her mouth and climbed after him.  
  
It became easier when Potter left the stairs and it became obvious he was aiming for a bathroom. He no longer looked around, and the only thing that made Pansy’s eyebrows rise was that he opened the door of a _girl’s_ bathroom. In seconds, he was inside, and he made a noise of relief.  
  
Pansy hesitated one more time. But she wanted to survive, didn’t she? And this could be prime information. She cast a spell that held the door open a little, as though it naturally hadn’t shut all the way. It was an effective means of disrupting anti-eavesdropping spells and wards, since they only worked on a sealed surface. She stood so that the torches wouldn’t cast her shadow across the floor outside, and listened.  
  
“There you are, Ginny.” Potter’s voice had dropped down to a velvet thing, soft as a butterfly’s alighting. Pansy rolled her eyes. She remembered Ginny Weasley as tough and resilient enough to defy Professor Snape. Did Potter think he would get anywhere with softness?  
  
But Weasley didn’t reply with harsh words or the ringing sound of a slap Pansy had almost expected to hear. Instead, she sniffled. Pansy blinked and wished she dared take a step closer to see inside. As it was, she settled for casting a Sense-Enhancing Charm on her ears and hoping.  
  
“What is it?” A soft thump that was probably Potter sitting down on the floor or maybe a bench; Pansy couldn’t remember offhand if this bathroom had one.  
  
Still no response. Pansy folded her arms. _Come on, Weasley, the git loves you. It shouldn’t be that hard. Talk to him about your dead brother or whatever it is._  
  
“I don’t know how to say it and sound nice,” Weasley whispered.  
  
Pansy blinked. The girl who went around casting Bat-Bogey Hexes on people was worried about being nice? But then again, it was probably different when she was with a fellow Gryffindor.  
  
“Then say it and don’t worry about that.” Potter’s voice was low. Pansy rubbed her shield mark, which was cold for the first time. She had no idea what it meant, and more interest in listening to the conversation anyway. “Just tell me. I’m worried about you, Ginny. I think I’m making you afraid, and I think—”  
  
“You _are_ making me afraid.”  
  
Pansy winced a little. _There’s not being nice and there’s being blunt enough to scrape someone’s heart out, Weasley._  
  
Potter seemed to agree with Pansy, if the little catch of breath she heard him give was any indication. Then he said, so gently that Pansy wouldn’t have been able to hear his words without the charm she’d cast on her ears, “Why? You know that you aren’t part of the bond, so I can’t ever do to you what I did to Zabini.”  
  
 _And what Zabini did was stupid, and should have been punished with death anyway,_ Pansy thought. She wasn’t looking forward to having to share a bond with someone so stupid. Blaise seemed to have lost his head over the war, and now he wanted to dash around like a Gryffindor looking for all avenues of escape, instead of waiting and searching for the advantage.  
  
“But you had power over him, and no one could stop you,” Weasley whispered. “The same way that _Tom_ had power over me.”  
  
Pansy had no idea who Tom was, but from the way Potter grunted, that blow had gone even lower than the other one. Pansy half-closed her eyes as the cold in her shield mark increased. She hoped that meant she wouldn’t have to go in and comfort Potter or anything like that. She could accept that she would have to deal with Potter in her political future from now on; it was a bit much to accept dealing with him in her personal one as well.  
  
“I would never do that,” Potter was whispering in a soft, fervent voice by the time that Pansy paid attention to him again. “I would never, I would never…”  
  
“It has less to do with whether or not you would, and more to do with me,” Weasley interrupted. She sounded calm again. _At least the chit has intelligence enough to realize that,_ Pansy thought. “It’s just that someone having absolute power over someone else reminds me of Tom and what he made me do with the diary.”  
  
 _Right, there was a rumor about Weasley and a diary in second year._ But Pansy had never thought she’d got the whole story, and she’d never been interested enough to try and find out. It seemed she would have to, now, if only so the cold in her mark would fade away and she could sleep at night without feeling like her arm was floating in ice water.   
  
“I’m so sorry,” Potter said. Pansy still didn’t dare lean close enough to see, but she imagined him taking up Weasley’s hand and kissing it, and Weasley taking it back. A few seconds later, she was indeed walking towards the bathroom door. Pansy hastily cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself and backed up.  
  
“So am I,” Weasley whispered. “It was so unexpected, and it’s not something I want to think about, and—it’s not something you can help. I know you didn’t _ask_ for this. But I don’t think I ever really recovered from what Tom did to me. We talked about that once before, you remember?”  
  
“I remember,” Potter said, in a voice so filled with misery that Pansy rolled her eyes.  
  
“And so I think it’s best if we part,” Weasley said. This time, she was the one who made Pansy roll her eyes. _She sounds like a bad romance novel._ “Maybe if you get rid of the Lordship bond, we can date again. But not now. I’m so sorry, Harry.”  
  
“If I—if I tried to get rid of the Lordship bond, and it worked, would you come back and date me again?”  
  
Potter’s voice rang with a wistfulness that made Pansy press one hand against the wall and frown at nothing. Why was _he_ so heartbroken? Did he think that he would never find anyone again who wanted to date him, even with his power and his fame and his ability to command others? There were plenty of people who would find him attractive.  
  
 _But maybe he thinks that he only ever gets one true love or something._ Pansy knew there were people that ridiculous, although she had been lucky enough to grow up without many of them around.  
  
There was a soft sob, and Weasley said, “Maybe. But I can’t wait forever, Harry.”  
  
“I understand,” Potter said, in a hollow voice. “And someone who can cause pain from a distance isn’t what you need.”  
  
Then Weasley really did start through the door, and Pansy flattened herself back against the wall. Weasley didn’t have eyes for anything but the floor, though. She walked her way with her head bowed and her red hair bouncing around her, shoulders slouched to make a picture of misery.  
  
Pansy wanted, very badly, to sneer at her. _You’ll find someone soon enough. I remember. You were the sort of person who never thought that you were worth anything unless someone looked at you like you were the center of their universe._  
  
“ _Parkinson_?”  
  
Pansy started and looked up. Potter stood in front of her, his eyes piercing through the Disillusionment Charm and his hand resting on his right arm. Even as Pansy took a deep breath and prepared to announce herself, Potter flicked his wand and snarled, “ _Finite_.”  
  
The Disillusionment Charm ended. Pansy stood up straight. She remembered her father saying there was no shame in eavesdropping.  
  
Unfortunately, the next sentence he tended to say came along in her memory and made her flinch. _No, only shame in someone_ catching _you eavesdropping._  
  
“Potter,” she began soothingly.  
  
Potter shook his head furiously and pressed up against her. “Don’t you have any _sense_?” he snarled into her face. “Aurors already came and took the Malfoys and Snape and Goyle away, and now you’re sneaking around and doing things that someone else could try to arrest you for, too? And the mood the Aurors are in, they’d _listen_.”  
  
Pansy blinked. “I didn’t know that happened to them. Why didn’t you prevent it?”  
  
Potter nearly pushed his glasses off his nose, he rubbed his face so hard. “Because they did commit crimes, and there has to be a trial. The Ministry was all for arresting anyone with a Dark Mark and hauling them off to Azkaban. I at least got them to commute that to staying in a holding cell in the Ministry. But now I have to go and testify for them, and Zabini might try to kill me again, and you…Just stay out of trouble, all right?” He turned around to walk further into the castle, the opposite direction from the Great Hall where Weasley had gone.  
  
Pansy rubbed her arm, her chin, and then called out, “What if I can help keep _you_ out of trouble?”  
  
Potter turned around, his eyes as bright and cool as water at midnight. “I promise you, I’m not about to suggest throwing someone to the Ministry.”  
  
Pansy flushed hot and blurted out the next words that came into her head without thinking. “No, but you just found out that your girlfriend thinks you’re some kind of monster. You’re going to go off and brood about it, aren’t you?”  
  
Potter drew up his head like a donkey about to kick, and Pansy braced herself for pain in her bond mark. But Potter let the breath go in a sigh instead of a shout, and locked his hands together behind his back. “So what if I am?”  
  
“Because what she said isn’t true,” Pansy said. “Or not all true,” she added hastily, because she could see the flash of Potter’s eyes, and she could just imagine the way he would break out if he thought she was calling his precious girlfriend a liar. “She was right when she said it was personal. It doesn’t make you someone who would torture her to death. It just means you remind her of someone who would.” And Pansy did want to know more about the mysterious Tom, but no matter what Potter thought, she did have a well-developed sense of self-preservation, which meant she wasn’t about to ask that question.  
  
“And that’s supposed to comfort me?” Potter stared at her.  
  
Pansy hesitated. But why had she started speaking this way if she didn’t care about comforting him at least a little?  
  
“Don’t let it go to your head,” she said. “Maybe I’m doing it because I’m the only one around who’s acting sanely and hasn’t been hauled off to Azkaban.”  
  
“The Ministry, remember,” Potter said, but he had relaxed enough to smile. “What do you want, anyway?”  
  
“What?” Pansy blinked. “Well, more details about the Aurors and whether you think I’ll be arrested would be nice.”  
  
“Stay out of sight for now,” Potter said, touching the shield mark. Pansy thought he did it absent-mindedly, rather than to remind her it was there or threaten her. “There might be Aurors who would be willing to threaten you because of your supposed crimes during the war, or because you wanted to threaten me. And they might not check closely enough for a Dark Mark on your arm first.”  
  
Pansy stirred uncomfortably. “I did commit crimes during the war,” she whispered. “I cast Unforgivables on people. I mean, it was when the Carrows told me to, but…” She let her voice trail off. Now that she wasn’t living from moment to moment in a daze of terror, she was beginning to wonder what some of her victims would think of those words.  
  
To her amazement, Potter smiled back at her. “I cast Unforgivables, too, and I didn’t have anyone telling me to,” he said. “We both deserve trials, or no one does. They aren’t going to want to try me, but I’ll insist on it, if they insist on trying everyone who did something wrong and stupid during the war because they were afraid. I don’t even have _that_ excuse.”  
  
“But…there were people who didn’t do anything wrong and just fled and hid somewhere,” Pansy found himself mumbling. She knew that she should accept Potter’s words for what they were, the more than implied offer of protection, and back off and go elsewhere. She knew that she was being stupidly Gryffindor by being honest.  
  
For some reason, though, it was hard to feel stupid when Potter was smiling at her that way. “Did anyone from Slytherin do that?” he asked.  
  
Pansy frowned, trying to remember. “No,” she admitted at last. “Not that I can remember, anyway. The Carrows watched us all the time, and most of us had parents who were urging us not to do anything that would get us noticed.” She remembered the one firecall she had managed with her mother, the lines of tension in her face that Pansy had always envied because it was so pretty. Well, neither one of them probably looked pretty now.  
  
“And I don’t know if the people who hid and fought back would have trusted any Slytherins if you did try to flee to them,” Potter said softly. “Yes, we both did something wrong, but I’m going to make sure that what we get are trials and _justice,_ not just people running around shrieking that someone needs to be seized and condemned because that would make the public feel better.” His face pulled so harshly tight that Pansy almost drew her wand. “I know one person who was just thrown into Azkaban because that made people feel better. It’s _not_ going to happen again.”  
  
And that, Pansy thought, was a vow strong enough to rock Hogwarts on its foundations. She took a deep breath and said, “Then I’m with you. Not just because of the bond and the constraints it places on me. I’m with you all the way.”  
  
Potter smiled at her, so bright and wide that Pansy almost couldn’t believe it was directed at her. But she also couldn’t believe that someone could have come up behind her and Potter wouldn’t have reacted, so she did her best to smile back.  
  
Potter held out his hand. Pansy blinked at it for a few seconds before she accepted it. Potter shook it firmly.  
  
“I’m glad that we can be allies on this,” he said. “Listen. I need to see about Zabini, and make sure that he isn’t just left behind here.”  
  
“Behind?” Pansy repeated blankly.  
  
“I’m going to go into the Great Hall and tell the Aurors that they should arrest me for use of Unforgivables during the war,” Potter said calmly. “I hope you’ll come with me.”  
  
Pansy clasped her arms around herself, shivering, and never mind the warmth in her shield mark that felt as if she was holding her arm in the middle of a bonfire that, for some reason, didn’t burn her. _Most_ of her felt as though a wave had just picked her up and spat her forwards, to land on some cold beach. And now someone wanted her to wade back into the ocean and do it again.  
  
“That’s not a good political move,” she tried, but her voice was weak. And Potter was grinning at her with his eyes like jewels. Pansy had the feeling that not even his friends could reason with him well when he was in this mood. Well, probably. Sometimes Pansy thought that his friend Granger could do anything she wanted to do.  
  
“At least we would all be together,” Potter said cheerfully. “And they can’t go ahead and do something to my vassals when I’m looking the other way. And Aurors like the ones who came to arrest the Malfoys and Snape and Goyle deserve all the humiliation they can get.”  
  
“But if you’re locked up, then you can’t do anything to influence the public,” said Pansy.  
  
Potter laughed aloud. “Ron and Hermione will do that for me.”  
  
Pansy knew Draco had envied Potter his friends before, but this was the first time _she_ had felt anything like it. She wanted to put her hand over her belly and calm some of the pangs in it, but she had to make a decision, and Potter looked as though he would march right off to the hospital wing and speak to Blaise whether Pansy wanted him to or not.  
  
Pansy at last took a deep breath and said, “I’ll come with you. On one condition.”  
  
“What’s that?” Potter studied her as though she had suddenly become interesting.  
  
“You have to take advantage of everything that you can under the Lordship bond,” Pansy said. “All the legal protection it gives you. All the ways that you can challenge someone and have it mean something. All the rights that it gives you over your vassals.”  
  
Potter frowned at her. “But that might mean that you have less freedom.”  
  
“I’ll take a long-term loss of freedom with you over the long-term loss of being locked up forever, my Lord,” Pansy snapped back.  
  
When Potter’s smile returned, Pansy thought he had tamed a little of the fire, and she partially relaxed. At least it didn’t seem as though Potter was crazy enough to ignore her.  
  
“Thanks,” Potter said, although Pansy didn’t know what she had done that was praiseworthy, and turned. “Come on, we have to convince Zabini to come with us.”  
  
“I’d like to see you try,” Pansy said dryly as she followed him.  
  
Potter grinned at her. “Didn’t I mention? You can be bloody persuasive when you want to. I thought I’d let you try with him. And you should _see_ your face.”  
  



	10. Harry, Lord of Chaos

  
“Zabini.”  
  
Blaise jerked up and turned around to stare at Potter. He stood in the door of the hospital wing, his gaze so even and his arms folded so gently that Blaise was sure he had come to kill him. He reached for his wand, then dropped it as his right arm flared with an echo of the same pain that he had felt when he tried to kill Potter.  
  
 _It seems the bond won’t even allow me to defend myself,_ he thought, grimacing and sitting up. So he would meet his death with the dignity allowed him, whether or not he had a wand in his hand.  
  
“The others have been arrested and taken to the Ministry,” Potter said, his eyes deep with green shadows. Blaise wondered what his mother would say about them. He hadn’t had the chance to talk to her yet, as much as he had wanted to. He wasn’t _quite_ a prisoner, but the hospital wing was full of the less gravely wounded, and someone would have noticed if he’d approached the Floo. “I couldn’t prevent that, since they had Dark Marks and they’ll have to stand trial, but I could prevent them from being taken to Azkaban. They’re in Ministry cells now.”  
  
“Why are you telling me this?” Blaise had to ask. “Why would it matter to me? I don’t have a Dark Mark, which means I won’t be going to prison.”  
  
“And you never cast a curse during the war when a Death Eater told you to, or looked the other way from torture?” Potter asked, his eyebrows rising. “They’ll come and get you sooner or later for trial.”  
  
Blaise rubbed his hands on his trousers. That was true, and he had wanted to leave before that happened. With the chaos after the battle, he had thought it would be easy.  
  
And it _would_ have been, he thought, tucking his right arm along his leg. If Potter hadn’t interfered, and the stupid bond hadn’t manifested.  
  
“I think we should preempt them,” Potter said, ignoring Blaise’s stare. He wouldn’t need to know that it was because Blaise had had no idea Potter knew words like “preempt.” He could just think it was for the strangeness of his suggestion. “I think we should go down to the Great Hall and give ourselves to the Aurors, in front of an audience, so they can’t sneak us away the way they tried to do to Snape and Malfoy.”  
  
Blaise knew his mouth fell open. “The _we_ seems out of place,” he said, because he could, and no fire punished him immediately after. “What did you ever do that needs forgiving by anyone but a Slytherin?”  
  
Potter gave him a grim smile. “Used Unforgivables on people,” he said. “Without an order, even. Because I was trying to survive, sure, but I wasn’t casting them because I was in fear for my life.” He shrugged. “One, I just used because Carrow spat at McGonagall and I just wanted to curse someone when I saw that.”  
  
Blaise rubbed his eyes. He saw Pansy slipping in behind Potter, but it was difficult to look away from the great idiot in front of him, who had just given information worth an empire into Blaise’s hands.  
  
If Blaise could ever prove it. If Potter wasn’t going to march down and surrender himself to the Aurors anyway, the way he said he was.  
  
“You have no idea,” Blaise whispered.  
  
“No idea what?” Potter was the one who cocked his head at him, but Pansy was the one who spoke.  
  
“No idea what you are.” Blaise’s hands were shaking. He knew they had both noticed that. Too late to hide it, and too late to pretend that he was so weak they could order him around as they liked. “You have—you could get _away_ with this. Or I would have thought that you would never use Unforgivables in the first place. What _are_ you? What strange mixture of—I don’t know what to call it?” He had been about to say “good and evil,” but his mother’s voice whispered in his head, reminding him that would sound childish, that sophisticated people believed in far denser and deeper concepts than good and evil.  
  
“Gryffindor and Slytherin?” Pansy smiled a little. The smile had its own shadow, Blaise thought, lying on her face like a filmy grey scarf. “Well. That’s one way to describe it. But our Lord wants to stay with us, and he can’t do that if we’re arrested and taken to the Ministry, or if half his vassals are there and half are in Hogwarts. So we’re all going together.”  
  
Blaise turned around to face Pansy completely, because looking at Potter was too complicated right now. “Then he convinced you?”  
  
“He did.” Pansy leaned forwards, placing one hand on the clean white sheet of the bed and looking at Blaise so steadily that he flinched a little. It was the way his mother had looked at him when he did something stupid in the past—and he could admit, now, that challenging the bond had been stupid. He should have tried to cripple Potter, not kill him. “Look, Blaise. The bond is going to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future. If we’re going to break it, it’ll take a long time. We might as well work with the advantages it can give us.”  
  
“How is prison an advantage?” Blaise brushed a strand of dark hair out of his eyes, and Pansy echoed him. Her eyes were more brilliant than Blaise had ever seen them, though, the light glowing through the mask of weariness and unconcern she usually kept over them.  
  
“I think it can be, if we’re together,” Pansy said. “You know that we were stronger when we stood together with our House than when we tried to act outside it.”  
  
Blaise sneered at her. “That may have applied to you, but not to me.” His mother had a good position, in the center of a web of allies without being tied too deeply to them by blood or marriage, and she had raised him to be the same way, neutral, ready to turn around and place his hand in the hand of anyone else at a moment’s notice. Therefore, it had been more people inside Slytherin than outside it who had troubled him and demanded on his choosing a side.  
  
“Really?” Pansy leaned so near that Blaise could no longer focus on the color of her eyes. “And how many friends did you have outside Slytherin, Blaise? Would any of them shelter you now, if the accusations started flying and someone decided they would rather see you in prison than outside it?”  
  
Blaise scowled at her, unable to speak, hating the feeling. But it _was_ true that he had no Gryffindor friends, and they were likely to rule the day now. He had a few Ravenclaws he would associate with, but none of them would put themselves at risk for him. Besides, if everyone was tried who had cast illegal curses during the war, then they would probably have to deal with trials of their own.  
  
He glanced at Potter, who was leaning against the doorway of the hospital wing and listening. Potter smiled at him. Blaise turned his head quickly away and back to Pansy.  
  
“You think that doing something _this_ mad is going to win you friends?” he asked. “Taking a risk that could imperil your life?”  
  
“It’ll get me closer to my Lord and my fellow vassals,” Pansy said, twitching her head a little. “I told you, that’s the group we have to worry about right now. That’s the group that will sustain us as we struggle through this. The desires of people outside it aren’t very important right now.”  
  
Blaise thought of his mother, and ran his fingers along his shield mark again. How would she react when she found out he was Lord-bound? Would she be irritated? Angry that he hadn’t managed to avoid such a ridiculous fate?  
  
 _No,_ Blaise realized, with a little sinking of his stomach. _If I had managed to kill Potter and survive the bond’s punishment, then she would be proud of me, but I got caught. I have to deal with the consequences myself. She won’t care. She’ll expect me to find advantages where I can, and associate with who I have to._ It was one reason that his mother had never committed herself to open hatred of Muggleborns. She knew that Dumbledore’s side might win the war, and she would have strange bedfellows.  
  
 _Shit._  
  
Blaise sat up and turned to Potter. “Why did you come up with this plan?” he demanded. “I thought you didn’t want to be a Lord any more than we wanted to be vassals.”  
  
“At the moment, the only Lords I’ve found who managed to weaken their bonds died of heart attacks a few days later,” Potter said. “Maybe it’s coincidence, but twice is one time too many for me. And I want to live. If it means living this way, well, it won’t be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He fell silent, his eyes on Blaise.  
  
Blaise bowed his head. He couldn’t believe that he was seriously considering this, when less than a day ago, he had been cursing Potter and expecting to get away with it. And there was the possibility that no one would bring charges against him, that the people he had cursed during the war would never care or wouldn’t remember.  
  
Then he cursed softly as he remembered how prominent he was now, how no one would be able to overlook him as a vassal of Lord Potter. It wasn’t the notoriety he had wanted, not something he had _desired,_ but that was the way it was.  
  
Pansy was right. If something loomed across your path, you dealt with it the best you could, the way Blaise had dealt with his alternating rivalry and friendship with Draco. You didn’t try to run away from it. He knew exactly what his mother would say to that. Or not say, given the turned back and lowered eyes he would get from her instead.  
  
“Fine,” he said, rising to his feet. “But I want you two to speak. No sense in embarrassing myself more than I already am.”  
  
Pansy’s cheeks flushed a delicate rose as she smiled at him, but it was Potter’s shining glance that made the gentle warmth start up in his shield mark. Of course it was. Blaise rubbed his arm and tried not to scowl.  
  
*  
  
Harry stopped outside the Great Hall and squared his shoulders. For a moment, he worried that Ginny might be in there and might have told someone what they talked about—  
  
Then he shook his head. No. Ginny would do lots of things, but not that. And she had probably gone someplace to be by herself, or at least back to her family’s table, which was near the far end of the Great Hall.  
  
Harry stepped into the Great Hall and looked around for the scarlet robes of Aurors. It didn’t take him long to find them. Two stood talking to the Weasleys, in fact, and several others circulated around the room, looking keenly into the faces of the students sitting there.  
  
“I surrender,” he said, loud enough to echo. Of course, a lot of that came from the silence that had fallen when people looked up and realized who was at the door.  
  
Harry could feel Zabini behind him, the git’s tension swirling and flowing up his shield mark, turning like a top. Harry had no idea what Parkinson was feeling; she seemed to be calmer, and that meant his shield mark was less likely to pick up on it. Already he was learning a few of the nuances of the Lordship bond, he thought. It was formed mainly for protection, at least on his side, and let him know most often about the feelings that meant his vassals might need some protection.  
  
The Aurors by the Weasleys turned around and stared at him. Harry could see Ron and Hermione rising to their feet at the same time, identical expressions on their faces. Harry shook his head at them. He knew they would attack the Aurors for him if they thought it necessary, and he loved them for it, but he couldn’t allow that to happen, not now. He faced the Great Hall again, and saw two Aurors he hadn’t noticed before clearing a path to him.  
  
“Surrender for what?” one of them called, a short, squat woman with dark hair and a piercing voice that reminded Harry unpleasantly of Umbridge’s for a moment. But, when he peered closer, the voice was the only real resemblance. She looked as though she would smash a room full of meowing cat plates.  
  
“I surrender because I used Unforgivables during the war, and that means you need to arrest me,” Harry said, holding his hands out in front of him. He realized that he had no idea what an Auror would do other than Stun and bind someone. Hadn’t they escorted Snape and the Malfoys and Goyle out by holding their arms? Maybe they had cords or cuffs like the Muggle police used, though. “Along with my vassals here, who had to torture people during the war because the Carrows would have killed them otherwise.” He paused, and then added something he really wanted to know, but which was also a good idea to ask right now. “I suppose you _did_ catch the Carrows, so that you can try them for what they did to students at the school during the war?”  
  
The woman halted in front of him. Behind here were a few young-looking Aurors who whispered and blushed. Harry raised his brows at them, resisting the urge to flutter his eyelashes, and kept his wrists extended.  
  
“Not all the Death Eaters have been caught yet,” the squat woman told him, keeping her gaze directly on Harry. “And that includes the Carrows.”  
  
“What a shame,” Harry said, clucking his tongue. “But I suppose it _is_ easier to arrest people who come straight up to you and don’t resist.” He shook his head a little. “Aren’t you going to use _Incarcerous_ on my arms?”  
  
“That would depend on what you’ve done,” said the woman. The other Aurors behind her had joined their ranks now, as the ones who had been talking to various students and their parents shoved up together. Harry gave them an insincere smile and focused once more on the woman who had taken it upon herself to be their spokesperson. “We should have to determine your crimes.”  
  
Harry widened his eyes and touched his chest with one hand, leaving the other one stuck out so that they could wind chains around it if they wanted. “But that’s not what we heard,” he said. “We heard that certain people had to be arrested and taken to the Ministry at once, where they would be tried and have the accusations made later.”  
  
The woman swelled as though she was going to blow up. Harry half-wanted to see her do it. He thought it would be a glorious sight. “Who told you that?” she demanded in a low voice.  
  
“An Auror named Umson,” Harry said. “He thought it was his duty to arrest everyone with a Dark Mark, and he only came and asked me for permission when he remembered a few of them were my vassals and he _needed_ my permission.”  
  
“If bearing the Dark Mark was enough,” the woman said, “then half the people in the Ministry should have been arrested first. _Especially_ those people who work in our Department.”  
  
Harry drew in a deep, satisfied breath. This was what he had hoped to find, some evidence of wrongdoing or at least hypocrisy on the Ministry’s part. Umson wasn’t concerned with justice, or even with getting people with the Dark Mark rounded up so they couldn’t flee. He was interested in “them,” the people who weren’t part of the Ministry and who he didn’t know personally.  
  
Having just fought a war for the sake of “them,” having been vilified and hated and adored and encouraged to fight by “them,” Harry wasn’t in the mood to let someone else get away with using “them” as an excuse.  
  
“What’s your name, madam?” he asked the squat woman.  
  
“Jane Stone,” she said. “You really intended to let us arrest you? Surely you knew no Auror would touch you?”  
  
Harry shrugged and smiled. “I’ve already met Umson,” he said. “I thought he might have a cousin here. Or a sibling.”  
  
Stone turned and studied the rest of the Aurors behind her. At once the ones who had been blushing and murmuring tried to turn pale and widen their eyes and pretend they had never done any such thing.  
  
She turned back to him and said, “It is not ridiculous to want to keep track of those with Dark Marks, or to arrest those who used Unforgivables during the war.”  
  
Harry shook his head and extended his wrists. “Of course not. And I want to see justice during the war. But I think that _everything_ has to be taken into account. So if everyone who used Unforgivables during the war is going to be arrested, then I should be, too. Or if you’re going to admit that certain circumstances will excuse criminal behavior, then you have to admit evidence like Narcissa Malfoy saving my life in the Forbidden Forest. It can’t matter for me and not matter for them.”  
  
Stone shifted a little. Harry was sure he knew what she would have liked to say: that he was the Boy-Who-Lived, and the rest of them were just Death Eaters.  
  
Or Slytherins. Harry wondered how much the distinction would matter to some people, and if a Slytherin House identification was about to become the new Muggleborn heritage, the badge that indicated people you didn’t want to stand with.  
  
“You wanted someone to arrest you.” Stone sounded as though she was reasoning it out.  
  
“I thought you would soon come and arrest my vassals, and some of them have already been taken to the Ministry,” Harry said. “This seemed to be the simplest course to make sure everyone was together.”  
  
Stone stared into his eyes, and moved her jaw like a squirrel crunching nuts. “What if I were to take you to the Ministry, along with your other two vassals?” Her eyes moved over Zabini and Parkinson. “And you could speak to the ones who’ve been arrested?”  
  
Harry smiled pleasantly. “I would ask you what the price was.”  
  
“That you tell the truth each and every time,” Stone said. “About everything. Those incidents of using the Unforgivables you mentioned, and how the Lordship bond really happened, and any services or heroic actions your vassals may have committed during the war.” She made the heroic actions not sound much more innocent than the crimes.  
  
Harry smiled again and bowed. “I would be delighted.” He stuck out his hands again. “You don’t want to clap me in ropes for the look of the thing?”  
  
“I see no need,” said Stone, and turned with a nod to the Aurors behind her. “Remain here, half of you, and continue to interview the witnesses to the battle. We need to know _exactly_ who did what, and we need as many Pensieve memories as possible.” She shot a quick look at Harry. “And we don’t need any more perspectives on the moment when Lord Potter bonded his vassals. We have more than enough of those.”  
  
Harry had to smile at her. “Getting weary of them?”  
  
“We have more than enough of them, and now we have a chance to interview the person who did it,” Stone said, turning towards him. “No, we shan’t clap you in ropes. Do you want to Apparate or Floo?”  
  
Harry glanced over his shoulder at Parkinson and Zabini, who hadn’t said a single word so far. Zabini’s eyes were so wide, and Harry could feel the wavering and dancing of the green dot that represented him in his shield mark; he could bolt any second. Likewise, Parkinson stood there with a pale face and tight-clasped hands that told Harry she hadn’t bargained for this, although her dot was still on his shield mark.  
  
“I think we should Floo,” he said, turning to Stone. “With your Aurors scattered through our line as necessary, of course, to make sure that we all arrive at roughly the same time.”  
  
Stone nodded. “You’ll get in to see the Minister as soon as possible.”  
  
“I was unaware that anyone was Minister right now,” Harry said, staring at her.  
  
“ _Temporary_ Minister,” Stone said, sounding as though correcting herself wasn’t something she enjoyed doing. “For now, we have few people in the Ministry who we can prove didn’t serve _him_. Kingsley Shacklebolt had proof, though, and he’s been chosen temporary Minister until we can work out what to do.”  
  
Harry relaxed a little. Kingsley was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, at least, although that might make him even more hostile to Slytherins than anyone else. “What about you?” he asked. “You proved it, too, didn’t you?”  
  
Stone nodded. “When I was sixteen, I swore an Unbreakable Vow that I would never use Dark Arts, and had it witnessed by Aurors in the Atrium of the Ministry. That at least eliminates me from having used the Unforgivables and the other spells they _encouraged_ during the war just past.”  
  
“But if you had used Dark Arts,” Parkinson said, so suddenly that Harry started, “what would have happened to you?”  
  
“I would have died,” Stone said, looking at her, unblinking. “That is what the Vow does.” She nodded to the Aurors who had remained behind her after they divided themselves. “Guide them _gently_ up the stairs and to the fireplaces.” Her voice was loud enough that everyone in the Great Hall could hear, but Harry hadn’t noticed her casting the _Sonorus_ Charm. He wondered if it was a spell that she had mastered nonverbally, or if she was just taking advantage of the Hall’s acoustics.  
  
“In the meantime,” Hermione said, loud enough that Harry could also hear her, “we’ll continue to research Lordship bonds and the legal obligations of them.”  
  
Harry nodded to her. Plenty of people would think that meant he was leaping into this blind and that he didn’t know the first thing about what he had to do to protect his vassals, but Hermione had volunteered to send him information about advantages as well as disadvantages he could have.  
  
Stone began to herd them in the direction of the hospital wing. Harry caught a glimpse of Zabini’s dissatisfied expression, that he had just left the place and now he was having to go back. Harry would have caught his eye and offered him a smile if he thought it would work.  
  
Instead, he found himself twisting his head to the side, his body braced and quivering. His shield mark was burning, but not the way it had done before, when he punished Zabini or felt him running out to the Forbidden Forest or sensed Snape’s dark and self-destructive thoughts.  
  
This was something _else,_ he thought. A threat from outside and not inside the bond.  
  
There was a wand uplifted above the heads of other people. Harry doubted he would have seen it if, in some way, he wasn’t looking for it, the bond sharpening his senses to notice things that were out of place.  
  
And the wand was aimed at a rafter. Harry’s eyes traced out the path of the spell, how it would leap and deflect from the rafter, how it would come back down and slam into the head of the person directly below it…  
  
Who happened to be Parkinson.  
  
And Harry leaped before he thought, his wand tucked tight to his belly, his body tumbling through the air in the midst of a cocoon of defensive power, which he unleashed as he landed and turned to meet the assault.  
  



	11. The Lord Defending His Vassals

  
There was too much light, too much sound.  
  
Pansy stumbled back with her hands over her ears, her eyes fixed on the spectacle in front of her. She knew Potter had leaped, but she didn’t understand how or why. There was a cocoon of silver light around him now—Shield Charms, Pansy thought. But she had never seen so many of them cast all at once, and she _did_ wonder why he had to cast more than one. It wasn’t like enemies were coming from all sides.  
  
Then something caught her eye. She saw a crack in the floor of the Great Hall, near Potter’s foot. It was a smoking crack, and it definitely hadn’t been there a moment ago. Pansy tried to trace the path, and her eyes fell on a burning rafter directly over her head. Someone else put out the flame with a jet of water. Pansy wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. She could see the way a curse might have bounced from that rafter and down towards her. If Potter hadn’t got in the way first with his Shield Charms and his whirling curtain of energy, of course.  
  
She felt a little ill.  
  
Then Blaise was hauling at her arm. He wanted them to go towards the walls, Pansy saw with a glance. That would keep them safe beyond the first row of shouting people. It also might enable Potter to do what he had to do, defending them, without getting in his way.  
  
But when Pansy tried to move, a bolt of warmth shot up her shield mark. It didn’t feel like the almost _approving_ warmth she’d got when she confronted Blaise in the hospital wing. It felt as though someone was shooting her full of burning pellets, instead.   
  
She stood in the same place, and both shook her head at Blaise and shook his hand off her arm. Then she turned her head to find Potter, wondering what she could do that the bond wanted her there for.  
  
Perhaps nothing but watching. It certainly _seemed,_ as a close circle of blazing light surrounded Potter, that Pansy and Blaise would be able to do nothing to aid him.  
  
But they could be here. They could prevent themselves from getting in worse danger, or slinking away and worrying Potter later. Pansy folded her arms and held her head high.  
  
She wasn’t that experienced in battle; she had trouble telling who Potter was dueling in the close crowd of people that surrounded him. It didn’t matter. She could stand there and lend her eyes and the weight of her presence, and no one would be able to say later that Lord Potter’s Slytherin vassals were cowards.  
  
Her arm heated softly. Pansy blinked a little. Those thoughts were unlike her, were almost _Gryffindor,_ and she recognized them as part of the bond.  
  
But she had been upset sometimes in the past when people called her a coward for preferring the practical way out. And she wanted to make a good impression on other people. She might not value the same things they did, but she wanted to _look_ like she did.  
  
Maybe making that good impression was worth taking a few risks, along the way. Maybe the bond spoke to part of her that had already existed.  
  
Pansy lifted her chin, and watched.  
  
*  
  
Harry felt as though he was fighting in the midst of a great _clarity,_ as though sharpness of senses and quickness of reaction and richness of thought was another of the bond’s gifts to him.  
  
Who knew, maybe it was? This was the first time he had fought against someone on behalf of his vassals, after all, as opposed to against one of his vassals.  
  
He had blocked that first curse, and sought out the young man who’d sent it. He had sort of a familiar face, but he was too old to be a Hogwarts student.  
  
On the other hand, Harry thought, he could be the family member of one. Maybe one of the students that Parkinson had tortured on the Carrows’ orders.  
  
Harry set up Shield Charms, a blur of Shield Charms, all around him and in all directions, so that no one could get through them and cast more curses at Parkinson and Zabini. He discovered that his teeth were clenched as he worked, his hand tight around his wand. His holly wand, back the way it should be. He’d been able to use the Elder Wand for that much, at least.  
  
This was _stupid._ What did the people who wanted to hurl curses at the Slytherins think would happen? That it would be fine to answer violence with violence, that no one should ever have a trial, that everyone should just be condemned or put to death right away without asking what they’d done and what they deserved? If someone from Parkinson’s family came and cursed them later, continuing the cycle of vengeance, they’d probably cry foul, but what made what they were doing any better?  
  
That curse would have _killed_ Parkinson. And that was totally all right with the person who’d cast it. Somehow, it was horrible for Parkinson to be guilty of torture, but all right for them to be guilty of murder.  
  
There had to be _something._ Maybe the Lordship bond, maybe laws and justice if the Ministry would ever obey its own rules. Something to lean against, something that was bigger than just someone being angry and upset. The same way that Hogwarts’s students hadn’t been allowed to randomly curse each other in the corridors, and someone who tried to retaliate with a hex was in just as much trouble as the first person who’d cast one.  
  
He thought that as he built up the Shield Charms, and the anger in him was burning and breathing hot and clear when the wizard who’d cast the curse in the first place stepped forwards and aimed his wand at Harry.  
  
Harry glared at him from behind the Shield Charms, and waited. He didn’t intend to reply with an offensive curse unless he absolutely had to. His job was to be a defender. The bond had come from a Shield Charm mingled with an obedience curse in the first place. Maybe other people were okay with randomly killing, but Harry wasn’t.  
  
He only had to look around the Great Hall to remember all the people he’d seen lying dead in it. He didn’t want to see more.  
  
“You should get out of the way,” said the tall young wizard to him. Now that Harry looked closer, he thought the wizard had a family resemblance to Terry Boot. Harry didn’t know if Boot had survived the Battle of Hogwarts or even been here, but he also didn’t know if he’d been cursed by Parkinson sometime during the school year. “She wanted to kill you. I heard her.”  
  
“And now she doesn’t,” Harry said. He waited, his arms folded, his wand resting in his hand and buzzing with energy.  
  
That simple response seemed to baffle the wizard. He frowned and looked back and forth between Parkinson and Harry as though the change in her mind had to be written on her face. “She still wants to,” he finally said.  
  
“How do _you_ know?” Harry asked, and lifted his right arm. “Better than the Lord sworn to shield and protect her, I suppose?”  
  
The wizard scratched at his chin, and then said, “She cursed my younger brother. Held him under the Cruciatus for ten seconds.”   
  
Harry nodded. “Then that’s one of the things she’ll be tried for. But I recognized that curse you used. It would have burned her alive, and you aimed it so that it would bring the rafter down on top of her and kill her that way if she survived the first few seconds. What’s your defense?”  
  
“She cursed my younger brother,” the wizard repeated.  
  
“And she wanted to kill me,” Harry said. “Now she doesn’t. I’m guarding her, and the Aurors are guarding her, and they’re going to make sure she goes to the Ministry and prepares for her trial. What does killing her accomplish?”  
  
The man looked at him condescendingly. Harry still thought he resembled Terry Boot, but he was sure the Boot _he_ knew had never had that pointed a nose, or nostrils that big. “She would be dead. She would be punished.”  
  
“Would you be willing to be arrested, then?” Harry asked in interest. He had his wand out, in case someone else moved, but so far, most people seemed to find entertainment in listening. And perhaps this man could still surprise him. He was older than the majority of the Hogwarts students. He wasn’t an Auror. That meant he could be outside of the stupidity that sometimes infected those two groups.  
  
“No,” the wizard said quietly. “You shouldn’t be, when it’s revenge.”  
  
Harry gave him a huge smile and aimed his wand straight at the idiot through the small gaps he had left in the Shield Charms. “ _Brilliant._ Then you don’t mind if I curse you as revenge for cursing my vassal?”  
  
The wizard immediately tried to melt away. Someone shoved him from behind, and then Terry Boot was up beside him, panting and glaring at Harry. “He’s my brother Lewis,” he said. “And maybe what he did was stupid, but you don’t get to curse him for it. Sod off.”  
  
Harry nodded, and lowered a few of the Shield Charms. “I don’t care, and I’m willing to let it go, as long as he doesn’t try it again.”  
  
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” said Lewis, and aimed his wand around Terry. And to give him credit, he didn’t try and curse Parkinson again.  
  
He cursed Harry instead.  
  
*  
  
Blaise wanted to go and hide somewhere. He didn’t understand the way Pansy could just _stand_ there and act like battle was a spectator sport. A sensible person walked away and _stayed_ away from the wizards who had battle and torture training. Sometimes, Blaise hadn’t been able to manage that during this last year, and he had hated that more than anything, being forced to participate, or torture, or watch, or squirm under the pain curses.  
  
But now they could hide somewhere if they wanted, and Pansy stood there as though someone had tied lead weights to her feet. Blaise was reduced to craning his neck, while keeping his body twisted towards the entrance of the Great Hall so that he could run if this didn’t work out.  
  
He saw what happened, sort of, but not very well. He saw a flash of red light, he saw Potter fell, and he saw Pansy give a scream like an angry hawk and go diving straight in at the wizard who had done it. Blaise clutched his right arm, wondering if the Lordship bond would give the pain back to the vassal, or hurt someone who didn’t want to jump suicidally in like Pansy did.  
  
But neither happened. There was just Pansy, trying to fight back a pushing, shoving knot of wizards, many of them taller and older than she was, who Blaise didn’t know were enemies. Maybe they were just trying to get her out of the way so they could get to Potter, who was writhing on the ground, and give him help.  
  
Then one of them—maybe the first one, Blaise couldn’t _see_ —aimed his wand straight at Pansy, his blue robe swirling around his arm, and Blaise’s nerve broke.  
  
This was so _stupid._ None of this would have happened to them in the first place if Potter had just spirited them away to some secret property he owned or something. And he had to own Unplottable properties and mansions no one else had ever seen, right? He was the last descendant of what had once been a fabulously wealthy family. There had to be a house somewhere, with bright green gardens and silver water and _silence,_ where Blaise could rest.  
  
But no, instead everyone was getting involved, and Blaise would be stranded here or in jail _forever_ if he didn’t do something.  
  
So he drew his wand and raised a shield between the wizard in the blue robes and Pansy. Then he cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, and melted back towards the corner of the Great Hall.  
  
Which was what everyone sensible should have done _in the first place._  
  
*  
  
Harry hurt.  
  
The bones in his arms, which the curse had hit, blazed with pain. Drawing breath hurt, and so did having his hair on his scalp, and so did having _skin_. The pain wasn’t from a curse he was familiar with, and he had no idea how to stop it. It raced everywhere, and made it utterly impossible to draw a breath.  
  
But he had to draw a breath. He had to get up, because his vassals were in danger.  
  
The sudden sweet shock of sensation from the shield mark on his right arm told him that. And it gave him something to cling to, a reality that cut through the reality of the pain and made something else exist.   
  
Harry fought his way to one knee and touched his wand to his shield mark. He croaked out a Shield Charm, hoping the spell could flow through the mark somehow and protect Parkinson, who was dashing at the crowd in front of her without knowing where the enemy was.  
  
Maybe it did. A Shield Charm flamed into being in front of her, and Parkinson stopped, as surprised as Harry was, so _she_ hadn’t cast it. Just knowing that someone was safe let Harry get his hands beneath him, and then his knees, and fight his way up to a half-standing position. Lewis Boot looked at him with a wide-open mouth. Apparently the curse should have knocked Harry out for the count.  
  
Harry grinned back, savagely enough that the confident look finally left Lewis’s face, and he seemed to sense the possibility that he might be wrong. He began to back towards the far side of the Great Hall, and Harry, who was getting more and more used to the pain, scrambled the rest of the way to his feet. He panted, but that was nothing compared to the weight of the wand in his hand and the decisions spinning in his mind.  
  
He had to do what would keep his vassals out of trouble, and himself, too, because without him, they would be vulnerable.  
  
And he didn’t know if cursing Boot was the right course of action.  
  
“ _Finite Incantatem._ ”  
  
Harry gasped aloud as the pain in his body ended, so suddenly he staggered. It was a female voice that had cast the spell, and he turned to the side, expecting Hermione or maybe Parkinson.  
  
It was Jane Stone instead, the Auror he’d spoken to before. She looked like a boulder as she turned to face Lewis Boot. “I would have stopped this nonsense before,” she said. “But I was out of the Great Hall, in faith that people were _following_.”  
  
She darted a glance at the Aurors who had been supposed to escort Harry, Parkinson, and Zabini, and they flinched as if the look was a thrown dagger. Stone stepped up to Harry’s side and spent a moment supporting him. Harry nodded to her and resolved to remember to try _Finite_ the next time he was hit with a curse he didn’t know. He had automatically assumed that it couldn’t have that simple a counter because it was so powerful, but he hadn’t _tried_ the Finite, either. He really should. It was stupid not to have.  
  
“Did you curse Potter?” Stone asked Lewis Boot.  
  
“I did,” Terry tried to say, pushing himself forwards. He was only a little taller than Stone, but he looked pale and brave. Apparently it was an unwritten law of the Boot family that everyone had to sacrifice themselves for each other, Harry thought wearily.  
  
“You don’t have the magical strength,” Stone said, curt as lightning. “It was you.” That to Lewis.  
  
“I don’t deny that I did.” Lewis’s face was as deep a red as the curse he had cast at Harry, but he managed to draw himself up with what Harry thought was remarkable dignity under the situation. “If you care about it, Madam Stone, then I might suggest you should have intervened _before_ now, when Mr. Potter and I were arguing.”  
  
“I was out of the room and couldn’t see what was going on,” Stone said. “Spectators at a fight make it so no one can see over them. It’s the worst of being short.” She turned and looked at Harry. “Did you curse him back?”  
  
“No,” Harry said. “I did stop the curse he cast that deflected off a rafter and would have killed one of my vassals.” He gestured at the burn mark on the rafter over their heads, and Stone looked up and studied it.  
  
“I don’t think a situation like this should be discussed in the middle of the Great Hall,” Lewis said. There was dampness where his hair clung to his brow. “We should go somewhere private and explore the ramifications.”  
  
“Suddenly you know words like that,” Parkinson muttered behind Harry. She had come to stand at his shoulder. Harry nodded at her, keeping one eye on her so that she wouldn’t move forwards and get involved with more than words. He had seen her spring to defend him during the fight, and that was appreciated, but not something he wanted right now.  
  
Briefly, it occurred to him to feel for Zabini, but his green dot was right outside the Great Hall, and not moving. That would do for now.  
  
Lewis flashed her a glance so full of hatred that Harry wondered at it. Terry, the one Parkinson had tortured, was right there, but he didn’t look at Parkinson that way. Was he just too afraid to? Or did Lewis think he had more right to hate her, for some reason?  
  
“I think a situation like this should be discussed in private, too,” Stone said. Lewis’s shoulders relaxed. “At the Ministry,” Stone added, and turned to address the Aurors who had remained with her. “Make sure that Mr. Lewis Boot reaches the Ministry as part of our cavalcade. Keep him apart from the others.”  
  
“What did I _do_?” Lewis flung his hands up.  
  
“Used two illegal curses,” Stone said. “The fact that neither of them killed their target is irrelevant.” She turned to Harry and utterly ignored Terry’s protests and the way Lewis kept talking. “Do you need to go to a Healer?”  
  
Harry blinked. “No. It lasted, what, two, three minutes? I’ve been under the Cruciatus longer than that.”  
  
He was just stating a fact, but the long, slow stare Stone gave him still made him feel like a child. A second later, she snorted and turned away. “Come, Mr. Potter. That escort you asked for to the Ministry is past overdue.”  
  
Harry fell into line again, with several Aurors in between him and Parkinson, and double that number between Parkinson and Lewis. As they came out into the entrance hall, Harry looked around, located Zabini under the shimmer of a Disillusionment Charm that he could see straight through, and jerked his head.  
  
Zabini visibly quivered, but dropped the charm. Aurors moved in around him at once. They marched towards the upper floors with more dignity and more absurdity, both, than Harry had thought would happen when he first made his request to be arrested.  
  
 _At least we’re all going to be together,_ Harry thought, rubbing his arm as he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, on Stone, and not on Lewis, where he _wanted_ to turn and level it. _At least there’s that._  
  
*  
  
Severus glanced up when the door to his cell opened.  
  
He had been separated from Goyle and Draco the minute they came to the Ministry, taken to the holding cells, which lay in a half-concealed portion of the Auror Department, a corridor that led away beyond the offices and cubicles. It was a plain room, made of stone, no windows, no bars in the door, utterly lit, utterly bare except for one plain bed and bucket. Severus had sat on the bed and composed himself, watching as the Aurors exited the room with his wand.  
  
After that, there had been nothing to do but wait.  
  
Severus was good at waiting. Albus had kept him doing that more than once. The Dark Lord was a past master at it. Potions required it. This past year as Headmaster of Hogwarts had been spent doing little more than waiting. Waiting until the moment he could help Potter. Waiting until the moment Potter had discovered his destiny and walked to his death. Waiting to see whether the Dark Lord would die and Severus could survive the war.  
  
When the door opened again, he was deep in meditation, his hands folded beneath his knees, lost in memory of what he had read about Lordship bonds during his lifetime and the way they functioned, and whether any had ever been successfully removed. He could not recall it so. There were always people who claimed that they had a way, Potions masters who thought they could gain fame should they invent a potion that did that, but he could not recall one who _had_ the fame.  
  
“How _could_ you?”  
  
His visitor was Kingsley Shacklebolt. Severus sat up a little more. This man had been in the Order of the Phoenix, and that was both good and bad for Severus. Good because he might have a little loyalty to Severus and know, once he heard the story, that Severus had indeed killed Albus on orders. The old man could convince anyone to do anything. Shacklebolt knew that. He would believe the story of Unbreakable Vows.  
  
The bad side came from the words that Shacklebolt had spoken and the way he stood glaring at Severus now. He had known Albus, all right, and honored and revered him in much the same way that an ordinary vassal in a Lordship bond would revere his Lord. The temptation to take revenge when that killer was right in front of him might be too much, Severus thought, watching the man’s hand tighten on his wand.  
  
“How could I what?” Severus asked, because as with so many other things he had been involved in in his life, he could do nothing until he understood the accusation.  
  
With a smothered curse, Shacklebolt turned and locked the door. Then he paced over and stood staring down at Severus.  
  
“The word coming from Hogwarts is that you tricked Harry Potter into a Lordship bond,” he said. “Purely to spare your hide and the hides of some of your traitorous students.”  
  
 _Right. Of course someone would take that path when they saw that Potter was not going to reject us openly. I should have anticipated it._  
  
“I did not do that,” Severus said, and shook his arms. The sleeves fell back down them as Shacklebolt tensed up absurdly, eyes flickering back and forth between Severus’s face and his arms. Severus sighed. “Your people took my wand, and you should have begun to hear other rumors now, true ones, that I killed Albus on Albus’s own orders.”  
  
“Why would you do that?” Shacklebolt carried on staring at him. “You had enough independence that you could have refused.”  
  
“An Unbreakable Vow,” Severus said simply, and turned his arms over, revealing Dark Mark and shield mark. “Why would I have _Marked_ myself like this, Shacklebolt, when I finally had the chance to be free? I did not expect to survive the fall of the Dark Lord. Why would I sacrifice any freedom I had for security?”  
  
Shacklebolt hesitated, eyes still wide and wild. Severus waited, his Marks plainly in view. There was nothing he could do save speak more if Shacklebolt did not believe him. Words were one of Severus’s weapons, but he had never been in a position where they were all he had to use. In Hogwarts, in the inner circle of Death Eaters, in Dumbledore’s service, during the past year, he could have reached for his wand as well, or his Occlumency barriers, or at least his reputation.   
  
Now, he waited.  
  
Shacklebolt finally closed his eyes and muttered, “If this isn’t true, Severus, then you’re going to regret it.”  
  
The first name had already told Severus that he had won, at least partially. He kept the smirk off his face and his eyes on Shacklebolt’s. “Tell me why.”  
  
“Because the Wizengamot is meeting right now,” Shacklebolt said, lifting his head. “Seems there’s some ancient law that establishing a Lordship bond without asking the vassals first is a form of slavery, and enslaving _wizards_ has been outlawed for the past four centuries. If they decide that Harry, or whoever really initiated the bond, did that, prison’s the least you can look for.”  
  
Severus stood. “And that is why you came to me, hoping I initiated the bond,” he murmured, mind racing. “Because I am here and Potter is not.”  
  
Shacklebolt nodded curtly.  
  
“Take me to them anyway,” Severus said, and if this was part of the bond asking him to his Lord’s Shield, he no longer cared, not when he could feel an excellent excuse for viciousness curling his lips. “I have some words to say.”  
  
 _Only weapon or not, it may be a powerful one._


	12. Settled

  
“Is this comfortable enough for Your Majesty?”  
  
 _Stone isn’t here, or they wouldn’t have said that,_ Harry thought, and had to grit his teeth. He was starting to grasp another way the bond worked. When his vassals were nearby, Harry could do anything he needed to for them; he could suppress his temper, and speak in a soft voice, and cast spells that were more powerful and quicker than anything he’d ever managed before, and come up with crazy plans that might benefit them. But right now Parkinson and Zabini were in other cells, and he had no idea which cells the Malfoys and Goyle and Snape were in, and his head was buzzing with tiredness. He wanted to tell these idiot junior Aurors to go the fuck away and leave him alone.  
  
Hermione probably would have called what he was going through an “interesting experience.” Harry thought it was just another way that the bond was fucking up his life. He supposed that eventually, he would be able to blend these two states of mind, or at least leap back and forth more easily, but right now, it was bloody annoying.  
  
“You didn’t answer my question.” One of the Aurors stepped towards him. Harry looked closely at his robes, because something seemed off from the way Stone’s robes had looked in the Great Hall. They weren’t as dark a red. “Is this comfortable enough, _my Lord?_ ”  
  
“You shouldn’t call me that unless you’re bonded to me,” Harry said politely, not because he really felt polite, but because he knew it would piss them off.  
  
 _Trainee robes. I think they’re wearing trainee robes._  
  
Harry wondered for a second why someone like Stone would be relying on trainees, and then sighed. Of course. She’d said that a bunch of Aurors had been compromised, so they were either Death Eaters or they had done the same thing as the Slytherin students under the Carrows and followed orders in the Ministry because they were terrified of what might happen to them otherwise. Right now, trainees were more trustworthy than full-blown Aurors.  
  
“That’s a sign that the bench beneath your lordly arse isn’t comfortable enough, right?” The nearest trainee stepped towards him again. The one behind him winced and clutched at his arm, but that man shook him off and leaned in, until his nose was a few inches from Harry’s face. “That’s a sign we should do something to _change_ it?”  
  
“Eric, we’ll get in trouble!” whispered the trainee behind him, checking down the corridor.  
  
Harry considered the first trainee again. He was probably the right age to have left Hogwarts a few years ago, Harry decided, which might mean that this hostility towards Harry didn’t _all_ come out of him thinking that the Ministry shouldn’t make concessions to the Boy-Who-Lived.  
  
“You knew me when I was in school, right?” Harry asked. “And thought that I got too much attention and too much praise for being the Boy-Who-Lived? And now you think that you have to take me down a peg because I’ll get a big head because of being a Lord.” He sighed. “You would get along with Snape. Maybe you were one of his favorite students?”  
  
The trainee wrapped his arms in towards his chest, but seemed a lot more shaken about Harry describing him that way than he had been about the other trainee whispering his name. “What?” he began.  
  
“Come _on_ , Eric.” The other trainee hauled on Eric’s arm again and gave Harry an agonized look. Harry just stared back. If the agonized look was meant to be an apology, then it didn’t go far enough. The other trainee hadn’t actually prevented Eric from saying the things he did.  
  
“No.” Eric drew his wand. “I was a Ravenclaw and in my fifth year when you were a firstie. You didn’t know me well. You can’t say _shit_ about what I want and believe.”  
  
“Then why are you sitting here taunting me?” Harry grinned up at him. “What do you have against me?”  
  
Eric opened and closed his mouth. Harry shook his head a little. Some people thought he was Dark, and some people thought he was insane, and Eric apparently thought he was stupid. That annoyed Harry more than the rest. At least people would flinch away from him if they were afraid of him, and he might be able to make them leave him alone. But someone who thought he was stupid could do nothing but gape when they found out that Harry wasn’t.  
  
“Listen,” Harry said, leaning forwards and trying to make his voice as gentle and simple as possible. “I don’t want to fight with anyone.”  
  
“Really? Then why protect Slytherins?” Eric snapped. He had dark hair, which didn’t seem to stand on end naturally like Harry’s, but it was rising from his head now with the force of his fury. Harry eyed it. Eric might be capable of strong magic, or at least bursts of it, the way Harry had been able to cast all that magic at his Aunt Marge when he was upset. It would be better to get Eric on his side, if he could.  
  
 _And would I think like that, if it wasn’t for the bond?_  
  
Harry sighed. He was already tired of thinking and then sifting through his thoughts for what was “really” him and what was “really” the Lordship bond. He thought that he wouldn’t have time for it, anyway, in most situations. He would have to go with what would save him and the others, and if that meant accepting help from the Lordship bond, then that was what it meant.  
  
“Because I’m bound to them, and that won’t change,” Harry said. He allowed a little hope to slip into his world. It was a million-to-one chance, but Harry’s life had been saved by stranger chances. “Unless you know some way to weaken a Lordship bond that won’t damage any of the people in the bond?”  
  
Eric fell back a step. “Why would I have that kind of knowledge?” His eyes darted around the cell, as though he had suddenly realized that Harry might be under observation by wards. “Who told you I did?”  
  
 _Powerful, but paranoid._ Harry shrugged and slumped on the bench again. The other trainee had stopped trying to pull Eric away, and stood watching Harry curiously instead. He probably did that all the time, Harry thought. Watch, and stand around, and not “interfere,” which meant in practice that he put up with all the stupid shit other people did. Harry wouldn’t depend on him for anything. “Nobody. I just meant that you seem to think I have some _choice_ about defending Slytherins when they’re bound to me.”  
  
Eric gaped at him. “You mean you _wouldn’t_ if they weren’t bound to you?”  
  
Harry turned and tapped his head against the wall—gently. No one would benefit if he had a crack in his skull, except the people who wanted to see them all imprisoned or dead.  
  
“Of course not,” he snapped, turning back around. “I owe a few of them life-debts, and so I might have to testify at their trials or something. But the Lordship bond means that I’ll be responsible for them, legally and morally and financially, for the rest of my life or the rest of theirs. You think that’s _easy_? You think it’s something I wanted, when I spent years being responsible for the fate of the wizarding world? Of course not!”  
  
Eric blinked at him. Then he said, “But that means—I don’t think it’s right to try you for enslaving them, if you didn’t mean to.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Harry snapped, leaping to attention. He had thought he would be tried for using Unforgivables during the war and a bunch of other bullshit charges they could come up with, not for enslaving his vassals.  
  
 _Although that is the kind of bullshit charge the Ministry would come up with, and not such a far stretch,_ he had to admit a moment later. _Kislik would probably testify for the prosecution._  
  
“We weren’t supposed to _tell_ anyone that, Eric!” the other trainee hissed, looking up and down the corridor outside Harry’s cell. “You know that you only heard about it in the first place because your uncle’s on the Wizengamot.”  
  
“Exactly.” Eric stood there with his head thrown back, his neck tensed as though he was carrying a huge burden on his shoulders. He was trying to imitate Gilderoy Lockhart, Harry thought, or rather, the heroic stance that Lockhart had used in more than a few of his author photos. Harry would have snorted, but he was too busy watching Eric intently. “But the Wizengamot should have someone testify in front of them that Potter’s just as much a victim of the bond as anyone else. If it’s true,” he added, suddenly squinting at Harry. “But it must be. I know you hated the Slytherins.” He reached out and pulled Harry out of the cell abruptly by his arm, though after a minute Harry straightened up and walked rather than let himself be dragged. “Come on. The Wizengamot is sitting right now to debate the bond and whether it was enslavement, and whether that means that you should be tried as a Dark wizard. They weren’t going to let you in, but you’re here now, which means that your voice should be heard.”  
  
“We’ll get in trouble!” wailed the other trainee, hovering behind Eric and moving so that he kept the precise number of steps away from him at all times. Despite that, he didn’t run, Harry thought. Probably some follower of Eric’s family, the way Crabbe and Goyle had been with Malfoy. “You can’t just storm in there and demand they listen, Eric!”  
  
“Shut up, Oswald,” Eric said, and smirked in a superior fashion over his shoulder before turning back to Harry. Harry thought his words were for both Harry and Oswald, though. “That’s why it’s good to have an uncle on the Wizengamot.”  
  
And Eric set out through the corridors, striding fast and drawing Harry along in his wake. He had wanted to wait in the cells because he had thought he could do his vassals the most good by remaining there, but it sounded like the real battle was being fought right now in the Wizengamot’s courtroom.  
  
*  
  
So far, Severus had walked into the courtroom, been seated, and had the looming faces in the gallery peer at him while a droning voice from the right asked him if he understood that his testimony would be recorded, that anyone on the Wizengamot could ask him questions, and that he might be imprisoned for wrong or false answers to those questions. The proceedings would have been more elaborate in some of the other courts, Severus knew, but the Wizengamot followed the opposite procedure; they would add more rules later.  
  
It was an unfair system, and the one that Severus had watched Albus wrestle with and twist and use and manipulate, but never transform. He gave the expected acknowledgments, his voice low and flat. Then the wizard with the droning voice moved into sight, a small, grey-haired one recording Severus’s answers on a parchment, and Severus knew the questioning was about to begin.  
  
It started with Tricia Selwyn, a witch so old that she looked like she’d been pickled. “Is it true that you killed Albus Dumbledore and were commended by You-Know-Who for it?” she demanded.  
  
“Forgive me,” Severus said, touching his chest above his heart. “I was under the impression that this interrogation was about the Lordship bond that some of you believe me to have initiated, not about the murder of Albus Dumbledore.”   
  
Selwyn’s eyes narrowed. By using the word “murder,” he had deprived her of one weapon she could have wielded. “This is hardly an interrogation,” she said, picking up on the other obvious word choice and walking straight into the secondary trap Severus had prepared for her.  
  
Severus smiled at her. “No? Then what is it? I understood the Wizengamot was sitting in judgment on the Lordship bond initiated by the contact between Harry Potter’s Shield Charm and the Dark Lord’s obedience curse without the Lord or vassals of that bond in front of them. Should such a vassal and Shield walk into the courtroom, what could he see himself as but the questionee in an interrogation?”  
  
“Questionee is not a word,” Selwyn said, but she shut her mouth and firmed her jaw when the contemptuous glares began to come her way. Severus sat up and turned to face the rest of the Wizengamot. He had been in this position before, when he was being tried after the first war, but he’d had to respect the limits Albus set on what he said then, and pretend that he was pathetically grateful for the chance to get pardoned at all. Now, everything was already known, everything was already done.  
  
And the Dark Lord was dead.  
  
There was what felt like a soft explosion of light and air in his chest, spreading. Severus shut his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. He had not thought of that fact before now, lost in his bitterness at the bond and the fact that he was a slave again. But now…  
  
Now, whatever else they might do to him, they could not give him to the Dark Lord. He would never rise again in the future. There was that. There would always be that, from now on.  
  
“Who initiated the bond, if you didn’t?” demanded the small grey-haired wizard who had recorded Severus’s initial responses. He was leaning over the gallery railing and peering down at Severus as though he suspected he had spoken to foil Selwyn and for no other reason. “Reports coming from the school said you did.”  
  
“Who gave those reports?” Severus asked quietly.  
  
The little man stabbed a finger at Severus. “ _We_ ask the questions here, and not you!”  
  
Severus gave a shrug and crossed his legs. This witness chair had no chains, unlike the one he had testified in after the first war. Once again came that wonderful, floating feeling of there being nothing they could do to him. Nothing that would be as bad as the consequences back then, nothing ever again.  
  
“I merely worried for the accuracies of the reports you received,” Severus murmured, eyes on the small wizard. Searching his memory for the name felt like a long plunge into a dark ocean, but finally produced it. Xavier Fawley, that was it. “If the Wizengamot cannot rely on its servants to tell them the truth, then what is wizarding society coming to?”  
  
Fawley’s expression was so pinched that he looked as though someone had been squeezing his cheeks. “You will _answer_ the question.”  
  
Severus smiled gently at him, viciously, seeing another way that he could play with them. “No one initiated the bond,” he said.  
  
“Then there is no Lord, and no vassals?” That was Adela Abbot, a gentle, golden-haired witch who always looked as though she was on the verge of flinching. Frankly, Severus had no idea why she had gone into politics. She seemed to dislike the majority of what she had to do as a member of the Wizengamot, and had probably only taken a seat in the first place because of her family’s pure blood, rather than some kind of deeds in the Ministry propelling her to those heights.  
  
“There is a Lord, and there are vassals,” Severus said. He could feel the glares from several sides, but he kept his eyes on Abbot, who bit her lip thoughtfully.  
  
“Then who initiated the bond?” she asked.  
  
“No one,” Severus said.  
  
Pepper-Up Potion could only have made the steam coming out of their ears more visible. Selwyn crossed her arms and stuck out her chin like a battering ram to knock down the doors of Severus’s resistance. “Someone must have, or a bond would not exist.”  
  
“I gave you the answer to this question already, honored Wizengamot,” Severus said in a soft, bored monotone that his students knew to fear. “The bond happened because my Lord’s Shield Charm collided in midair with my former Lord’s obedience curse. It was accidental. No one can say that we chose to serve him. No one can say that he chose to bind us.”  
  
He received enough twitching fingers from that announcement that he wanted to smile, and would have if he hadn’t had better political sense. Taking a wizard as vassal could indeed be seen as enslavement, though that was a recent legal development and one that the Wizengamot had come up with at least as much to diminish the political power of bound Lords as out of concern for unfairly taken vassals.  
  
But if no one had actually initiated the bond or made the decision, then legally, no one was responsible for it. Severus supposed they could try the Dark Lord for using the obedience curse, which was Dark, but he also doubted they would find any vaults or properties to seize as compensation. And the Shield Charm was not a Dark spell, meaning that there was nothing they could try Potter with, either.  
  
Of course, this was the Wizengamot, who had declared that they didn’t need trials for some Death Eaters after the first war since “everyone” had seen them acting in the name of evil, but other Death Eaters, like Lucius Malfoy, needed trials because “one person less than everyone” had seen them casting Dark Arts. That Selwyn had used that phrase with a straight face still bewildered Severus.  
  
“Who made the decision to keep the bond going?” Selwyn asked now.  
  
“Can the honored Wizengamot member clarify the question?” Severus asked, staring up at the ceiling for a moment.  
  
“ _You_ do not ask the questions!” Fawley was hopping up and down, aiming a finger at him. “We do!”  
  
Severus glanced idly at him. These members were much less self-controlled than the Wizengamot he had had his trial in front of. He supposed that the length of time they had been in charge—they had grown fat and complacent—and their sudden release from the Dark Lord’s rule was the difference now. They didn’t see the need to hold their emotions back when they were talking to someone who couldn’t kill them for displaying them.  
  
“Very well,” Severus said, and remained silent.  
  
“Answer her question!” It was only not a howl, Severus thought, because no one else would use the word to describe the sound Fawley was making. The other Wizengamot members would agree that it had been a polite question, and the reporters knew better, by now.  
  
“I do not understand her question,” Severus said. “And I am not allowed to ask for clarification. I know that now.”  
  
Selwyn stood up and walked slowly to the gallery railing, bending down so that Severus could get a better look at her glittering black eyes and the iron rings on her fingers. Supposedly, she had won those rings in duels, either directly from her victims or by insisting that they melt down some heirloom and make the ring for her after she lost.  
  
Severus did not fear her. He was not about to duel her physically.  
  
“I will ask one more time,” Selwyn said. “Who made the decision to keep the bond going instead of severing it immediately?”  
  
Severus let his eyes widen. “There are ways to sever a bond,” he whispered, because he could not ask a question. “I did not know.”  
  
“That is not an answer to what I asked.” Selwyn’s fingers were white against the dark iron of the rings.  
  
“I did not know there were ways to sever a bond,” Severus said, ducking his head. “Particularly an accidental bond whose circumstances of formation would be difficult to replicate. I did not know. Now I know. I will begin investigating the methods of doing so immediately.”  
  
The sound of metal grinding on metal as Selwyn worked her hands back and forth on the railing was annoying, but Severus merrily ignored that. He had frustrated her, and that was all he wanted to do for right now, drive her in circles until she exploded or something else changed. Perhaps they would decide to bring in more witnesses, but until they did, this was Severus’s game.  
  
He was aware of Shacklebolt standing stiffly and unhappily by, his arms folded, but ignored the man. He had been the one who chose to bring Severus here, without trying to insist, instead, that the Wizengamot wait to hold a proper legal trial. He could put up with the consequences.  
  
“Who _made the decision_ to remain as vassal and Lord?” Selwyn asked, sounding as if even that minor clarification was costing her at least a lung.  
  
Severus bowed his head. “The bond is two days old,” he said. “I am not sure that we have remained vassal and Lord, so much as been swept along by the course of events.”  
  
Selwyn stepped back and turned to Fawley, saying something Severus couldn’t hear. Fawley nodded, and turned, gesturing yet another wizard to come forwards. Severus watched as he came up to the front of the gallery, fussing with and straightening his robes before turning his long, donkey-like face towards Severus.  
  
 _Pius Thicknesse._ The man whom the Dark Lord had placed under Imperius and used as Minister during the war.  
  
Shacklebolt tensed next to Severus, his motion so small that Severus would not have noticed it if he had not been so near him. But he was, and he knew Shacklebolt better from Order meetings than the man would have thought. Severus’s observation skills had been trained in Death Eater circles, where to miss something was death.  
  
Severus suspected where the attack would come from, then. He felt the weary certainty moving through his bones that had come to him when he found out about other Wizengamot activities in the past seventeen years. They cared little about legality, because the chances that something would be reported truthfully and publically outside the courtroom were small. This had turned, suddenly, from a trial on the Lordship bond into a trial for his activities during the war.  
  
 _And I was foolish enough to feel free at the prospect of the Dark Lord no longer being present._ That had been stupid. Of course they could still use his Death Eater past as fetters to trap him.  
  
“You recognize this man?” Fawley was the one who asked the question, perhaps because Selwyn felt she had exposed herself enough for right now. Selwyn took the seat behind Thicknesse and folded her hands over her knees, looking so pleased that Severus wished for his wand.  
  
“Yes,” said Thicknesse, wrapping his fingers in the long tie he wore as though he could use it for a shield. “He is Potions teacher at Hogwarts.”  
  
Fawley gave Thicknesse a stern glance, and Thicknesse started and coughed. “And, of course, also a Death Eater,” he added. “Someone who attended the Death Eater meetings that I was brought to _against my will_ and cursed at.”  
  
“Someone who seemed to be trusted by You-Know-Who?” Fawley asked, probing delicately.   
  
Thicknesse stared at Severus. The glazed eyes made Severus raise his own brows and lean back in his chair again. Perhaps this would be a simpler trap to escape than he’d thought. Prolonged exposure to the Imperius Curse almost literally scrambled one’s brains. The chances were good that Thicknesse hadn’t recovered enough yet to be a useful witness, no matter what the Wizengamot thought.  
  
“Yes,” Thicknesse muttered after too long a pause. “But—but he called him the Dark Lord.”  
  
Fawley looked as though he could barely restrain himself from shaking Thicknesse. Shacklebolt had leaned back a little, and Severus suppressed a smile. So this could be bad for him, but it would still take a while.  
  
“Why not call him Voldemort? He’s dead, and his Snatchers can’t find you anymore.”  
  
Severus started and glanced up. Potter was walking in at the door, accompanied by two young Auror trainees, one strutting and one dragging. Severus reached over and touched the shield mark on his right arm, finding it warm. Of course, the courtroom was stifling; that was probably why he hadn’t noticed Potter coming closer.  
  
Either way, there was _no_ excuse for the fierce welcome that rose up in Severus’s chest like lightning.  
  
 _But it will be fun to watch what they do,_ Severus thought, leaning back again, his eyes on the stunned and pale faces of the Wizengamot above him. _That is why I welcomed him._  
  
The shield mark pulsed on his arm, soft and steady, giving the lie to that statement. Severus ignored it. It was hidden by cloth anyway, no one could see it.  
  
No one except Potter, who stepped in front of Severus with a single glance at him, as though to make sure he had no visible wounds. Severus bowed his head a little, and let others take that gesture how they would. Potter’s eyes lit up with a fierce glitter, and he turned back and faced the Wizengamot again, clearing his throat. It was the same sort of sound Severus might have made, were he free to.  
  
 _Perhaps we are more than Lord and Shield,_ Severus thought, staring at Potter’s back. _Perhaps we are comrades._  
  
His life had changed, and changed again, in the span of forty-eight hours. At least this change was more welcome than most of them, if it was real.  
  



	13. Nick of Time

  
Harry didn’t know all the people staring down at him, but he doubted that mattered. These were the Wizengamot members who had thought they could judge him and one of his vassals without even informing Harry. And the ones who probably thought that he was obnoxious because maybe he would use his power for things they didn’t approve of.  
  
He wanted to choke.  
  
But choking would do no good when they wanted words, and so Harry smiled and nodded at all of them and said, “I’m here to answer your questions about the Unforgivables I used and the Lordship bond and the other crimes that you wanted to try me for.” He folded his arms and moved a little in front of Snape. There was an expression on Snape’s face that Harry thought was really open, or maybe that was just the bond talking. Either way, Harry wanted to give him time to conceal it.  
  
“Don’t forget the crime of liking Slytherins,” Eric whispered from behind him. Harry had no idea whether he was joking or not, and didn’t have time to figure it out. He just nodded without looking around. That seemed to content Eric, who shut up.  
  
“Mr. Conant,” said the little wizard who stood in front, and he was looking at Eric, not Harry. “Why did you bring Mr. Potter here?”  
  
“That should probably be Lord Potter,” Eric said. There was no dent in his confidence at all, apparently, and Harry had to smother an incredulous laugh. He had never thought it would be a _blessing_ to have someone arrogant as his ally. “I know it’s ridiculous, but he has a Lordship bond to a bunch of people.”  
  
“You did not answer my question,” said the little wizard. Harry quickly assessed him and decided he didn’t like what he saw. This man had nothing in his face of Professor Flitwick’s kindness, even though he was about that size. He had a mop of silvery hair and a face that seemed carved into stone by his frown lines, instead.  
  
“I don’t need to answer your questions,” Eric said. “Because he will.” He patted Harry heavily on the shoulder and stepped back.  
  
The little wizard turned to Harry. “Why have you come?”  
  
“I already said that,” Harry said. He thought for a second, and decided that the best course was just to be as sarcastic as he liked, sarcastic the way he’d been in his head when he was a child. These people already hated him. They wouldn’t listen to anything like rational discussion of a bond, not if they could start trying him for it and yelling at Snape when they hadn’t even set up a trial. And Harry might convince a couple of the more sensible ones that he was going to stand up for his vassals no matter what. “How much earwax do you have in your ears that you can’t hear me?”  
  
Eric said something about recommending an ear Healer from behind him. The Wizengamot just stared at him. At last a blonde witch cleared her throat and stood up.  
  
“Who did you use the Unforgivables on?” she asked, and sat down again.  
  
“A Death Eater named Travers and a goblin who worked for Gringotts,” Harry said. He kept his voice down with an effort. The disgusted faces peering at him over the gallery railings, and the frightened ones, made it hard to stay calm, no matter how sarcastic he’d promised himself he could be. Besides, this witch hadn’t asked a question that deserved a sarcastic answer. “I cast the Imperius Curse on them. And I used the Cruciatus Curse on Amycus Carrow.”   
  
“Dear, dear,” said the little wizard, fluttering his hands as he started to write something down on a pierce of parchment. “You know that using the Unforgivables carries a lifetime sentence in Azkaban?”  
  
“Oh, yes,” Harry said. “That’s why I thought I should join most of my vassals there—” he had no idea if Zabini or Goyle had cast the Unforgivables, but he knew all the others had “—as well as all the Aurors that Auror Jane Stone told me about, who used it during the past few months. I hope you can continue to protect the wizarding world when they’re all gone.”  
  
Silence. The blonde witch looked around at the others as though she expected one of them to answer, and when they didn’t, she cleared her throat and said, “Well, um. The use of the Unforgivable Curses was declared legal for Aurors a few months ago. So they don’t have to go to prison.”  
  
“Declared legal _by Voldemort_ ,” Harry said, hating that none of them seemed to understand. “The same way I was hunted _by Voldemort._ If I’m going to be punished for what I did then, which was against the laws that he set up, then we should just go back to the old laws and punish everyone equally, not follow his laws.”  
  
Still none of the others would speak up, and although the poor woman’s face was absolutely red by now, she continued stumbling her way through an explanation. “But—none of us precisely knew who was behind the changes at the time, and the same change had been made during the first wizarding war with You-Know-Who. It was revoked afterwards, of course. But we’re not going to arrest the Aurors.”  
  
“But you’ll arrest me,” Harry said. “And one of my vassals who was a double agent and under the compulsion of an Unbreakable Vow to do whatever he was ordered to do, including casting the Killing Curse on Albus Dumbledore. And a bunch of students who cast them because they were told their families would be killed and tortured if they didn’t…” He fell silent and chuckled when suddenly a whole bunch of them avoided his eyes instead of trying to haughtily stare him down. “Oh, _that’s_ the difference, isn’t it? You’ll arrest the students who are Slytherins or who did what the teachers told them to try and survive. You won’t arrest the ones who did it for a while and were Ravenclaws or Hufflepuffs or Gryffindors. Because what really matters is your _House,_ in the end. And this scar on my forehead.” He pushed his fringe away from his face. “Your Aurors were fighting for the wrong side most of the war, but it’s okay, isn’t it? Because you want them to be excused, and you aren’t frightened of what they’ll do with their political power, but you’re afraid of me. That means I have to be stopped, somehow.”  
  
Silence for another few long moments. The blonde witch sat with her face in her hands and refused to speak up again no matter how much the other Wizengamot members glared at her. Finally, a tall woman with a prune face to rival Aunt Petunia’s and iron rings on her fingers stood up and cleared her throat.  
  
“It has less to do with which side they were on, and more to do with their motives in casting the curses,” she said.  
  
“So escaping torture and battling Voldemort’s people aren’t enough to excuse someone?” Harry asked, staring at her. “What is?”  
  
“Being _innocent_ ,” the woman said, and the rings clicked and sparked as she gripped the railing in front of her. “Not willfully torturing someone else because you hated them. Trying to help others escape torture.”  
  
Harry coughed helpfully. “So. Why does hurting someone else because you were trying to help your family members escape torture not count?”  
  
“Because they are not _innocent_ ,” the woman said.  
  
“Define that.” Harry rapped out the words with enough force, he saw, to shake the woman. She looked over her shoulder as though wanting someone else’s help, and then seemed to accept that the rest of the others were cowards. She faced him and straightened her shoulders.  
  
“They did not help You-Know-Who during the first war. They have purity in their hearts. Their families suffered during the war. They made some attempt to escape the teachers and demands that they might have made on them in Hogwarts.”  
  
“Well,” Harry said, and began to count off the points on his fingers, “most of my vassals didn’t help You-Know-Who during the first war, because they were babies during it. Their families suffered during the war, either going into hiding or having to give their properties and vaults up to Voldemort.” The way that half the room flinched when he said that was _most_ satisfactory. “And any time they tried to escape the teachers at Hogwarts, either they got watched more closely or they got tortured themselves.”  
  
“But they are not pure in their hearts,” said the ringed woman.  
  
Harry smiled at her. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Madam Tricia Selwyn.” The way she said her name, it was clear that the first part was the most important, and she jerked her head up so that she could stare down her nose at him more effectively than Draco had ever managed. Harry decided he would hate to be told that, and treasured up the observation to tell him.   
  
“I assure you, Madam Selwyn, that you won’t find a greater number of people who are fanatics about being pure outside my vassals,” Harry said. “I had to suffer from them telling me that I wasn’t pure enough a number of times over the years.”  
  
Selwyn all but banged her hands on the railings. “I was not referring to purity of _blood_ , Mr. Potter.”  
  
“Then define it.” Harry stood there with his arms folded and grinned. He liked the way the balance of power in the room had shifted to him. Well, part of him hated it, hated that it was necessary, and wanted to go and have the trouble-free life that he’d sometimes dreamed of during the last year on the run. But if the choice was having power over other people and letting someone have power over him, then he knew which one _he_ preferred.  
  
“Being pure in heart means a sense of loyalty and trust,” Selwyn said, as if she was reading from an invisible parchment in front of her, but slowly. “A commitment to the ideals of the Ministry and the wizarding community.”  
  
“How are you going to test _anyone_ for that?” Harry had to ask. “Especially the people who did what they had to do to survive during the war? Which is almost everyone who works in the Ministry and who was at Hogwarts and not actively resisting and hiding?” He shook his head. “The number of people who are left alive and free is going to be awfully small if you insist on arresting and trying all the others. Maybe even getting some of them Kissed.”  
  
“You do not _understand_ ,” Selwyn said. “It will not be that hard to make the determination, especially under Veritaserum.”  
  
“Are you going to ask everyone if they tortured other people or hurt them or betrayed them to escape consequences?” Harry asked. “Or only people that you’ve already decided are guilty?”  
  
Selwyn smiled sweetly at him. “Well, at least with _you_ , Mr. Potter, it will not take us much time to make a determination. You have already admitted your guilt for anyone to hear who’d like it.”  
  
Harry smiled back. “What about you? Did you come to work at the Ministry during the war? Did you pass any legislation they told you to pass? Did they intimidate you into keeping quiet and standing aside when someone else was tortured? Did you condemn people you wouldn’t have condemned if it wasn’t happening during a war?”  
  
Selwyn lost her smile and leaned over the railing, hissing, “You _stupid_ child, do you not understand how impossible it would be to run the wizarding world on the standards that you are demanding?”  
  
“No,” Harry said starkly. “I know what you want. You want to tidy everything away with a minimum of fuss and hope that no one will object. You want to clean up the ‘mistakes’ of the first war. For example, I imagine that you’d condemn Lucius Malfoy this time instead of allowing him to slither out of the consequences with a lie about the Imperius Curse. Good for you. But you’ll also condemn students for being in the wrong House, and some people for running, and some people for hiding, and some people for fighting. It’s all going to be in the service of who you’re afraid of, and it won’t care about real justice. I know that real justice wasn’t served after the first war, _on either side._ Does the name Sirius Black mean anything to you?”  
  
Selwyn narrowed her eyes further as though looking down a distant tunnel. “The name does not mean something to me as a badge of injustice _I_ served,” she said.  
  
“Then you voted for a trial?” Harry asked. He had to admit that he had no idea who on the Wizengamot might have been against Sirius and who wasn’t. He only knew that not enough people had clamored for a trial to make sure he _got_ one.  
  
“I do not remember,” said Selwyn. “But I was not the one who decided that all Death Eaters at that time should be put in Azkaban as soon as possible, and I was not the one who decided that the evidence was too overwhelming even to put him under Veritaserum.”  
  
“Who was?” Harry had to admit that it would be good to have a name at last, to know who was responsible for that, for Harry growing up with the Dursleys, for Wormtail spending twelve years free and Sirius going steadily more mad in Azkaban.  
  
“No one,” said Selwyn.  
  
“It was the circumstances of the time, you mean?” Harry smiled up at her.  
  
Selwyn nodded, glancing around as though she wanted everyone to see how successfully she had tamed Harry Potter. “Exactly. One cannot wonder at that, with the chaos that surrounded every decision at the time.”  
  
“No one could wonder about it _at the time,_ maybe,” Harry said. “But I’m here now, and I won’t let you arrest people and not arrest people and give some people trials and not give others one because you want to.”  
  
Selwyn closed her eyes, this time as though she was tired to death. “You will not succeed,” she whispered. “You can intervene legally only for those vassals you are legally bound to. You cannot intervene for anyone else.”  
  
“If they take me as a Lord or ask to be put under my protection, I can,” Harry said. “And you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean that I think every Death Eater should be let go. There are tons of them I’ll be happy to provide evidence against, and I think Bellatrix Lestrange deserved everything she got. But I’m _personally_ famous, and I’m sure the papers will be happy to do interviews with me about all the terrible, unfair things I’m seeing and experiencing and hearing about.” He smiled up at Selwyn, and then turned the smile on the rest of the Wizengamot, so they would get it. “This time, there isn’t going to be chaos that lets you do whatever you want to people. Because I’m here.”  
  
He could hear a choke behind him, and looked over his shoulder at Snape. The shield mark was steady and warm on Harry’s right forearm, and he didn’t think anything was wrong with Snape at the moment that some pounding on the back and pouring of water down his throat wouldn’t cure.  
  
Snape’s eyes had already gone blank again, any emotion that showed in them vanishing. Harry nodded cheerfully to him, and more cheerfully still to Shacklebolt, who was staring at him, and turned around to face the challenge of a different wizard, a fat one dressed in purple robes. Harry wanted to shake his head sadly. What Dumbledore made look fascinating just looked terrifying here.  
  
“You don’t have the legal right to _do_ this,” the man whispered, as though raising his voice would give him that long-delayed heart attack. “You can’t do this. No one can. We of the Wizengamot are the last legal authority for the wizarding world.”  
  
“But you don’t have the legal right to try me for the Lordship bond without my presence, either,” Harry said. “Or to ask me whatever questions you want without making sure I understand the situation. Or to condemn someone without a trial. Yet you’ve done all that, anyway.” He continued smiling, but he pulled back some of the mask from his face, and saw the large wizard jump. “And I’m kind of fucking furious that you would _still think_ , even after I’ve killed Voldemort, that I’m someone Dark that you need to duck around and circumvent and arrest and call mad. So yeah, I’m going to fight. For all I know, I’ll go to prison next, if I don’t. You’re afraid of me.”  
  
Behind him, he could hear a low mutter from Eric. “So, does that mean that he dislikes Slytherins or not?”  
  
Harry didn’t move, partially because it was silly to respond to the doubt in Eric’s voice and partially because none of the Wizengamot members had made an attempt to answer him so far. He stood there with his arms folded and waited, turning his head from side to side. If someone tried to cast a spell—though he thought they were less likely to try it in a room where Shacklebolt acted as a witness—then he would be ready.  
  
*  
  
 _This boy…_  
  
The shield mark on his arm did not burn, he felt no resentment from the bond for choosing that word, but Severus corrected himself on his word choice immediately. This was not a boy, someone who could come in and argue like this. There were still things about Harry Potter that were decidedly adolescent, but he was not that young any longer.  
  
He had argued better than Severus had thought he would. Perhaps most of the argument came from his own perception that he was being discriminated against, rather than fondness for his Slytherin vassals, but self-interest was a motive Severus had learned to trust.  
  
Severus saw someone he could support. And if the shield of Harry Potter’s reputation as the Chosen One was spread over them, it might protect them more effectively than the shield of the bond ever could.  
  
“You are right that there should be legal trials,” said Abbot at last, standing up and moving to the railing to take the speaker’s attention away from Albert Brindis. Severus watched Brindis scuttle gratefully to a chair, his purple robes flapping around him. “But will you answer me one question, at least?”  
  
Potter nodded. Severus could feel the tension in him melting like hot chocolate through the bond. He supposed that was all right. Potter would still be on guard when it came to anyone else, but Abbot was as harmless a politician as there was on the Wizengamot.  
  
“The bond really happened the way you said it did?” Abbot asked. “No one initiated it?”  
  
Potter shook his head. “Voldemort cast a curse that would have made Professor Snape a slave if it landed on him, and he did it because Professor Snape was trying to protect some of the Slytherin students. I got in the way, and I wanted to protect them, too, so I cast a Shield Charm. The bond, as far as we can tell, formed from the combination of the Shield Charm and the obedience curse. I didn’t choose the people I bonded to. It was everyone who was behind my Shield Charm. And Voldemort certainly never intended for all of us to survive, let alone to make me a Lord.”  
  
Abbot nodded slowly. “Why did you want to protect them, when, if some of the reports we have received in the past are true, they did horrible things to you?”  
  
Severus could not forebear a snort. They knew about what had happened to Harry Potter in school all those years, and yet no one had sent Howlers to Dumbledore to protest the Slytherins’ egregious treatment of the Boy-Who-Lived?  
  
Of course, Abbot not being a Wizengamot member who lied much, perhaps they really had received other reports since the battle, from Aurors or non-Slytherin students who had been in the school.  
  
“I didn’t think about it that much,” Potter said, shaking his head as slowly as Abbot had spoken. “I just thought that no one deserved to _die,_ and it was especially wrong that Voldemort wanted them to die.” He turned and looked at Severus over his shoulder, and it was not only the steadiest but the friendliest regard that Potter had ever given him, by a long shot. “I thought Professor Snape was dead already. And then he gave me some…memories I needed.” His voice stumbled. Severus wondered what _exactly_ had happened after Potter left the Shrieking Shack, but knew it was not his place to ask. “Seeing him like that made me want him to live, made me want them _all_ to live. I never knew it was going to be a bond, though. I think I would have hesitated if I knew what would happen.”  
  
The shield mark on Severus’s arm twanged like a harpstring, and he managed to hold back his sigh only with the self-control that had often served him in Order of the Phoenix meetings. _He’s lying. He would have leaped ahead even if someone explained all the consequences to him, because that is what he does._  
  
Severus wondered idly if part of his work as Shield was also going to be protecting Potter from himself, but he doubted it. The Shield served for the most part to ward off anger within the bond. Someone else would have to take up the work of explaining outside consequences to Potter.  
  
“Would you truly stand up for anyone who put themselves under your protection?” Abbot bowed her head to keep her eyes hidden. Severus was not sure where she stood on the matter. Members of her family were among the ones tortured during the war, and she might have lost some, but on the other hand, she had sat on the Wizengamot throughout the war, enacting the legislation that the Dark Lord wanted, just as Potter had accused them.  
  
“I’d have to,” Potter said, his voice low and empty. “That’s the way the bond works. But like I said, that doesn’t mean I think everyone is _innocent._ I just want fair trials. For everybody. It won’t help anyone if we condemn all the Slytherins and breed more resentment towards them in the future. Then they’ll get angry and take their revenge someday, and it’ll be a cycle of war that never bloody _ends_.” He looked up at Abbot, his face gone pale. “I fought the hardest to save the world of anybody. Don’t I _deserve_ some peace? Not to have to fight again for a long time? That’s what I want. That’s what I’m trying to do—some of it because I’m selfish and don’t want to fight, and some of it because the bond is making me, and some of it because I really do believe in a fair trial for everyone. But I don’t know which part comes from which.”  
  
Severus saw Selwyn and Fawley lift their heads as at the call of a hunting horn. They would think they could use that against Potter, he thought. But Potter, even standing as he was now with his head bowed and his eyes on the floor at his feet, would make no easy opponent.  
  
Severus was glad to know that. Glad that he might have a comrade here, a Lord he could work with instead of fear or spy on or serve.  
  
 _Which does not mean it will be easy,_ he thought, darting his gaze over the Wizengamot again. _But we will make it easier together._  
  
“And if you don’t have anything else that you think we should be tried for,” Potter continued, “I’d like to ask that you release my vassal Professor Severus Snape and I back to our cells.”  
  
They did it only because they wanted to plan a new strategy, Severus was certain, and this “trial” had not gone well for them. But Potter had been stronger than Severus had thought he could be, and that mattered.  
  
 _That will matter to all of us,_ he thought, watching Potter’s back as they paced out of the room, sensing the way that the Auror trainees who had followed Potter strutted after him, feeling the grip that Shacklebolt had on his wrist. _It must matter._  
  



	14. In Holding Cells

  
Draco leaned his head back against the wall of his cell, and closed his eyes.   
  
The world around him was small and blank and silent. He hadn’t seen his parents since they were ushered into this part of the Ministry, Narcissa’s hand pulled from his by the Aurors. She had been steered into one door, Lucius into another, and Draco had a different one shut in his face before he could even strain his neck after his parents.  
  
He sat there, and he breathed.  
  
He hadn’t had much chance to do that over the last few days, he admitted. Everything had been so _changed._ The Dark Lord was dead. He could never harm Draco and his family again.  
  
Maybe Draco was deficient, but he couldn’t feel all that grateful for that fact. Not when he had been hurled into yet another change of life, when he was a vassal and his family might have to be vassals, too.  
  
 _Is it going to be like the Dark Lord never died? When we’re all busy serving someone else, even if it’s someone who would never torture us?_  
  
But Draco banished that thought. He knew too much of Potter, if he was honest with himself, to think that he’d ever lord it over them. Maybe misuse his power in some ways because he was so unused to it, but that would be ignorance. And Draco already had evidence that Potter had some good sense, and the sense that would let him take advice, too. Even if that advice was his bossy friend’s.  
  
Draco grimaced and let his head drop back with a thunk. _I’m going to have to make peace with Granger, aren’t I?_  
  
Well, he probably would, if he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life resenting her. And he would really rather not.  
  
He looked up as the door creaked open. An Auror he hadn’t seen so far stood there. From the tight look on his face and his even tighter hold on his wand, Draco thought he knew what he had come for.  
  
He stood up slowly, his hands on the wall behind him and his eyes on the Auror. Taller than Draco, broader than Draco, stronger than Draco. On the other hand, Potter wasn’t, and he still had power over Draco. So maybe Draco could have power over this man, if he had the courage to talk.  
  
He waited too long, though, or else he could never have found the right words. The man stepped in and began to speak in a long, low, whispering voice.  
  
“During the first war, I was an Auror, and the only thing I was prouder of than my job was the fact that my daughter chose to follow me into it. She trained so hard that I worried for her sanity, but she was a good Auror. She respected the rules, but she knew when to break them. She could perform all the common curses and countercurses. She knew when to trust witnesses and when to ignore them.”  
  
He paused, and the cell filled with the sound of his breathing. Or maybe that was the sound of Draco’s breathing. Draco tried to calm it a little, without much success.   
  
“But your father changed that,” the man said, and his voice had picked up. “He took her away. He _changed_ her, and she came back convinced that You-Know-Who was righteous, because Lucius Malfoy argued her into that.”  
  
There was a long, choking sound. Draco didn’t think it came from him, but he didn’t bother to try and find out, or to ask what had happened, though by that point he really did want to know. He stood there with his eyes fastened on the man, and especially the man’s ash wand, which had wavered down by his side but now was rising again.  
  
“And,” the man whispered, on a long, rising breath that made Draco’s bones ache as he listened, “in the end, I had to kill her in battle. My daughter the Death Eater, who used to be the pride of my family.”  
  
His wand pointed straight at Draco’s heart now, and Draco could feel his mouth watering with purest terror. He would have liked to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. The man seemed to have paralyzed him in everything.  
  
“I swore that I would pay Lucius back for that,” said the whispery voice. “But not simply by casting curses on him, or taking away his money, or even investigating to ensure that he was arrested for possessing Dark artifacts. None of that was good enough, not when he took so much away from me. Only the same price would serve for me.”  
  
 _Taking away a child._ Draco didn’t really have to translate that, it was silly to try and translate that, but the thought floated like a bubble across the surface of his mind anyway.  
  
“I didn’t think the chance would come to me,” the man said, as if talking to himself. “Not so late in life. But not so soon, in another way. Before I retired. Before the fire that burns in me because of him burned down to ashes.”  
  
His wand jabbed Draco’s chest. Draco hadn’t even realized that he’d stepped so close, but he looked down and there it was, his death, his future, not far below his face. The man jabbed, and then his wand came up and scraped against Draco’s cheek, guiding his chin to the side. The man was smiling at him.  
  
Draco thought he would have either begged for his life or pissed his pants, but once again, he was held motionless and couldn’t make any decisions for himself.  
  
There was something else, though, something that caught his attention and wouldn’t let it go any more than the man in front of him would. Something that flamed and blazed against his arm, something that made him itch and tingle and burn, and he reached down to the shield mark on his arm and found that he _could_ —  
  
And that meant he could move, and that meant he could fling himself to the side, and that meant he could scream, in so loud a voice that he felt as if it must surely pass beyond the walls of the cell and to the ears of the one it was meant to reach, “ _Potter!_ ”  
  
*  
  
The flaring heat of the bond woke Harry from a half-daze as he trotted down the corridor. He was actually looking forward to going back to his cell and eating whatever plain food they served him. His brain felt exercised and stretched from all the arguments he’d had with the Wizengamot. He was very sure that he wasn’t meant to debate that much. Hermione, though, would have been right at home.  
  
And then the shield mark was blazing, and Harry looked at it and saw the green dot furthest away from the others, trembling and moving in place on his arm as though it was going to fly off.  
  
 _Malfoy._  
  
Harry broke away from the loose grip of the Aurors holding him, who were mostly Shacklebolt and a few others who had turned up as they walked back towards the cells. Harry thought more of them wanted the prestige of saying they had escorted the Boy-Who-Lived than were serious about arresting him.  
  
Good. That worked in his favor. Harry darted past the door he knew they’d been leading him to and down another corridor instead, past bolts and chains and panels. He aimed straight at one particular closed door that didn’t stand out among the others and kicked it in, which was easier because it had been left unlocked.  
  
Inside was Malfoy, and a man Harry didn’t recognize, but who wore the robes of an Auror. Of course he did, Harry thought, as he darted to the side, and spun on one foot, and got his body between the man and Malfoy. Malfoy helped by scrambling along on all fours and hiding desperately behind Harry, whimpering a little.  
  
“I don’t know who you are,” Harry told him, aware that Shacklebolt and the others were hurtling along just behind. “But you can’t harm my vassal without going through me first. He doesn’t even have a wand. How can he hurt you?”  
  
The man stared at him. Harry thought he could make out deep green eyes like his own in the hood, and iron-grey hair that reached his shoulders. But the man wore a hood, and he wouldn’t pull it down.  
  
“Who are you?” Harry said. He could feel Malfoy cringing behind him, but he didn’t have the time to turn around and reassure him. He thought the man would probably attack the minute his back was turned. “Who told you that you could threaten my vassal?”  
  
“An ancient debt.” The man laughed, and the voice shivered up and down Harry’s spine. It wasn’t the same as Voldemort’s voice, but it seemed to come from the same place. Harry narrowed his eyes a little. Maybe it was just because none of the Aurors around him were speaking up to say they recognized this man, maybe it was the voice, but Harry was starting to think that this one might not be human.  
  
“Not the one that I told the boy it was,” the man continued, sliding forwards a step. Malfoy whimpered. Harry shifted his stance so that he was still in between them. “His father does not owe it to me. But it is owed nonetheless, and it will be paid.” The man’s voice slid down, and he hissed dangerously. “It doesn’t matter whose blood I have to take to get it.”  
  
“Then it can’t be a very important debt,” Harry said, in his best bored voice, while he watched the man’s feet. He wondered if the man was about to curse him, or curse Malfoy, or break to the side and run away. It was hard to tell. “You don’t think anyone important owes it to you, if you’re willing to take anyone’s blood.”  
  
“If you knew,” the man whispered, with what sounded like delirium at the back of his voice. “If you _knew_ what I know, you would not be so quick to defend a Malfoy.”  
  
“Then tell me what you know,” Harry said, “and maybe I’ll change my mind.” _Honestly, was no one else ever raised with that lesson? Not that I ever changed the Dursleys’ minds, but they still wanted to know what happened when I did something freakish. They didn’t just rush into something and attack and yell._  
  
The man stood watching him so long that Harry began to think he would simply walk away and disappear, or maybe attack. Then he reached back and flipped his hood down after all, shaking his head a little to get the hair out of his eyes.  
  
Harry gasped. The man’s face wasn’t familiar, but his eyes were the exact same shade of deep green that Harry’s were, and his mother’s were.  
  
“Did you never wonder who your mother’s ancestor might have been, what kind of Squib, who was forced out of the wizarding world and married a Muggle?” the man whispered. “Did you never wonder whether sometimes a wizarding family’s line ended but for that Squib, so that they alone carried the blood of their house? And whether the blood could flower into magic and someday allow me to return?”  
  
“I didn’t even know my mother was descended from a Squib,” Harry snapped, feeling irritated. Was this another thing that everyone knew but no one had bothered to tell him, like the way his father had bullied Snape? “How can I possibly know who you are or what you want, or what family you come from?”  
  
The man puffed out a sound that seemed to take a long time to come to Harry’s ears. It was a laugh—Harry thought.   
  
“I come from the Helton family,” said the man. “You would not have heard of them. They died out except for Patricia Helton, the Squib your mother was descended from.” His eyes were on Harry, so deep and piercing that Harry would have squirmed. Luckily, having Snape as a teacher had prepared him for that, a little. “And now, except for you.”  
  
“Well, I don’t want you to attack the Malfoys,” Harry said. His voice was raspy, but he forced himself to speak in a clearer one a few seconds later. No one was going to say that he had been slow or hard to understand. They would take his vassals away from him with any excuse in the world, he thought. “It doesn’t matter what one of their ancestors did to my ancestors.”  
  
“They caused the extinction of the Helton family.” The ghost, or whatever it was, slid a step closer to Harry. “Does that not matter to you?”  
  
Harry took a deep breath and reached behind him. Malfoy clutched his arm at the shield mark, still panting desperately. Harry forced himself to shake his head. “No, it doesn’t,” he said. “I never knew them. I never knew my mother was descended from them. She was always a Muggleborn, and she saved me because she loved me, not because she had old family magic. I have the Lord bond to a Malfoy now. If I have to forget about what they did to me _personally,_ then I have to forget about what they did to my ancestors.”  
  
“But I do not.”  
  
That was the only warning Harry had before the man’s figure blurred, and he headed straight at Harry, and thus at Malfoy. Harry didn’t have a wand, and he didn’t know anything else he could do, so he just spread his arms as wide as he possibly could and jumped into the air, clutching at the ghost.  
  
He felt an extreme chill, wending its way into his chest. His heart stuttered. He heard the same puffing laugh in his ears.  
  
 _Not you,_ said the voice, either mental or so close that Harry couldn’t tell the difference. _I would not harm you._  
  
Then Harry was dropped on the floor, and there was a cloud of grey and green fluttering around Malfoy, choking off the screams he was trying to make. His hands flew up and down, and his head was battered against the floor.  
  
Harry leaped at the ghost again.  
  
This time, it was more solid, and he felt as though he had collided with a chest and then a back. Maybe the ghost had turned around very quickly. Harry didn’t know. He didn’t have time to think about it. He had to fight back.  
  
He reached out and grabbed what he thought was part of the ghost’s cloak. It slipped through his fingers like blood, but then got more solid. Maybe the ghost was trying to choke the life out of Malfoy, and for that, he had to be substantial.  
  
The shield mark flaring furiously on Harry’s arm certainly seemed to indicate that the ghost was trying to choke the life out of Malfoy, anyway.  
  
Harry tugged hard at the cloak, choking a little as some of the mist slipped into his mouth. Then he found the collar, and he yanked it tight as he threw himself backwards. He heard Aurors scattering as he moved, and a second later, he slammed into the door of the cell. His head rang. Blood filled his mouth from where he’d bitten his tongue.  
  
But he had his goal in front of him, and he wasn’t about to yield now. He tightened his hold until, if the ghost was trying to choke Malfoy, Harry was also choking him. The ghost didn’t seem to breathe, but that was all right. Harry just squirmed his way up the old grey cloak until he was kneeling on the ghost’s back, and started to feel for his eyes.  
  
The ghost whirled around. Harry went flying again, but some of the mist flowed behind him and made a cushion to cradle him before he could hit. Harry reckoned it was true what the ghost had said: it really didn’t want to hurt someone who was the last descendant of the Helton family.  
  
“What are you doing?” The ghost hovered in front of Harry, his feet no longer touching the floor. Harry decided he probably didn’t have to pretend to be human anymore, either, now that he had announced who he was. Malfoy whimpered a little from the side, and Harry was glad that he was still alive.   
  
“What are you doing?” the ghost repeated. “He is a descendent of the family who killed your family.”  
  
“I never knew that,” Harry said quietly. “I never knew _them_. I have to defend him because I’m his Lord, and he’s alive, and everyone else from my family is dead. Even my mum. There just—it’s not like I _want_ to be here,” he snapped, because the ghost kept looking at Harry the way Sirius had when he’d said Harry wasn’t like James. “But no one ever asks me what they want. They just do what they think I should approve of. Well, I don’t approve of you trying to kill Malfoy. He’s my vassal, and I have to protect him. What kind of position did you think you were placing me in, attacking him? Or do you not know about Lordship bonds?”  
  
The ghost wavered back and forth in midair. “I know about Lordship bonds,” he said at last. His voice was slow and reluctant. “But you should not be bound in one.”  
  
Harry snorted. “So, tell me. If you’re meant to prevent danger to members of the Helton family, why didn’t you ever show up before when I was in danger? Why didn’t you even stop the _Malfoys_ when they attacked me? Lucius Malfoy has gone after me with a wand before. Draco’s tried to scare me. But you show up _now_. Why?”  
  
In answer, the ghost vanished.  
  
Harry watched the air where he’d been, and then waved a hand up and down in it, but there was really nothing there anymore, and the freezing clutch had vanished from his heart. He stood up, wincing as he brushed his hand up and down his chest, and walked over to Malfoy, kneeling down in front of him. He was sitting with his knees drawn up in front of his face, and didn’t seem to realize that the ghost had gone and he was all right now.  
  
“Are you okay?” Harry asked, and put a hand on Malfoy’s knee when he wouldn’t move, just shivered and huddled into himself.  
  
*  
  
Draco couldn’t make his tongue move from the top of his mouth for a long second, even though he wanted to answer Potter’s question.  
  
 _A blood-ghost. You saw a blood-ghost._  
  
They were supposedly spirits bound to a family, _part_ of the family, who would come to life when their bloodline was in danger from a specific threat. Draco had never heard of anyone who’d seen one, though. Lots of them had gone dormant when pure-blood family lines died out, the way that this ghost had described the Helton line doing, and Lucius had been prone to brag that the Malfoys were too capable of taking care of their vengeance to need one. If the Blacks had one, Draco had never heard his mother mention it.  
  
 _Trust Potter to have one,_ Draco thought, and had to hold back a hysterical giggle.  
  
“ _Malfoy!_ Are you all right?”  
  
Draco sniffed and gulped and finally managed to lift his head. Potter was crouching in front of him, staring at him in concern. He smiled a little when he caught Draco’s eye, but his face remained still and wary.   
  
“Now I am,” Draco said. “I thought my heart was going to stop when it touched me, though.” He reached out a tentative hand and put it on Potter’s arm, and he didn’t even think he needed to touch the shield mark. “You could have saved my life. Thank you.”  
  
Potter smiled at him, a little reserved. “That’s what I’m supposed to do, as a Lord,” he said, and patted Draco’s shoulder before he started to pull his hand back.  
  
Draco shivered. His heart was pounding crazily; stupid thing, it only seemed to have realized _now_ that it could have stopped.  
  
Partially, Draco had his father’s words in the back of his head urging him to take advantage of the bond that connected him to Potter, and make himself important. But he also wanted to—well, make it clear that this was more, to him, than just any old connection that they might have.  
  
“I mean it,” he whispered. “Thank you.” He took Potter’s hand and held it near, staring at him, just so Potter would know how serious this was. “I owe you a life-debt now— _another_ one, along with everything else.”  
  
Potter cleared his throat for so long that Draco thought he might have breathed in some of the blood-ghost, and by then the useless Aurors had begun to intervene. “Mr. Malfoy, you will have to let go of Mr. Potter’s hand,” said a tall one that Draco thought was Auror Shacklebolt from other times he’d seen him, and he stepped forwards and bent down as though he meant to pry them apart.  
  
Draco shook his head and then ducked it. “Don’t let them take me away,” he whispered to Potter, as softly and appealingly as he knew how. “I don’t know if I can stand on my own.”  
  
Shacklebolt narrowed his eyes at Draco as though he didn’t buy that for a second, but as always, Potter rose magnificently to his rescue, practically coiled and hissing at the Aurors. “He was just attacked by a ghost,” he said. “Something where even I didn’t know what it was. Will you let him sit for a minute?”  
  
“We have to get you back to your cell,” Shacklebolt said. “And get you some food,” he added, looking down his nose as though Draco was incapable of understanding the necessity for his Lord to eat.   
  
“Yes, I know that,” Potter said, but although he stood up, he kept himself between Draco and the Aurors. _As though they were the blood-ghost,_ Draco thought, and smiled. Whether or not the bond was changing his mind so that he became more comfortable with the thought of serving Potter, it was nice to be taken care of. “But did anyone think to feed Malfoy?”  
  
“I will.”  
  
Potter turned towards the door and smiled a little. Draco bristled. He didn’t know the squat woman who had appeared there, or he might have felt better about Potter’s attention turning to her.  
  
Potter squeezed his hand without turning back to him, which was half-comfort, at least. “Thank you, Auror Stone. You’ll make sure that my vassal gets something to eat? And Snape, and the others who were brought in with me and with them?” He looked at Draco now, and at least his eyes were soft and gentle.  
  
“I will.” The squat woman—Stone—moved into place between the people who had accompanied Shacklebolt, looking from face to face like she was looking for someone to arrest. “I would have come earlier, but there was paperwork I had to complete. It seems I cannot leave you alone for a second.”  
  
“It wasn’t Aurors who threatened the people I protect this time,” Potter said. “It was a blood-ghost.”  
  
Stone stood there, and then nodded. “Then you should find out more about it, and what it will take to placate it,” she said. She glanced at the Aurors around Potter, and they backed off. “In the meantime, I will remain here to ensure that Mr. Malfoy is well-treated. _You_ will take him back to his cell.”  
  
The cowed Aurors, including Shacklebolt, backed out, and Potter turned around and smiled at Draco. “I’ll be able to know if it threatens you again,” he said quietly, touching the shield mark on his arm. “But you can trust Stone. She was the one who made sure that a boy who cursed Pansy was arrested.”  
  
“He cursed _you_ ,” Stone said from behind Potter. Draco sensed she was the kind of woman who appreciated honesty.  
  
“Let’s say he cursed everyone, and that might be more accurate,” Potter shot back, and nodded to Draco. “Stay as safe as you can. I’ll come if you need me.”  
  
Draco murmured his thanks, and sat down on the bench in his cell again as Potter walked out. Stone leaned out to tell someone to bring him food, while Draco hugged himself in silent excitement.  
  
Potter hadn’t acted as though he resented defending Draco from his own family’s blood-ghost. He had smiled at Draco and spoken kindly to him and handed him over to someone he seemed to believe would protect him. He had even let Draco hold his hand when it might be embarrassing in front of other people.  
  
Draco felt his cheeks burn as he remembered that he had also been one of the people doing the hand-holding, but it was no more humiliating than anything else that had happened to him since he became Potter’s vassal.  
  
And in the meantime, he knew that he had done something else important. His parents wanted him to make himself special to Potter somehow.  
  
Well, Draco had given him someone to protect.   
  
His father might scoff at that, but Draco had seen the way Potter flung himself into battle, and the way he got between Professor Snape and the Dark Lord when the Lordship bond happened. He needed someone, someone he could keep close and defend and who couldn’t always defend himself.  
  
And…  
  
 _It’s nice to be taken care of, too._


	15. Speak the Truth

  
“Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry looked up with a faint smile. After all, it was nice to hear from someone who didn’t call him “Lord.”  
  
He’d had a filling if plain meal of toast and porridge and something that might have been pumpkin juice in another lifetime. Now he waited, his hands gently twisting around each other. What else did he have to do? It wasn’t like he could read in here, with no books, and he didn’t see the point in plotting and planning dizzily. The Wizengamot might do something he had never thought of. He would react when he had their plans in front of him, and not before.  
  
But Auror Stone was in the doorway now, and of all the free people in the Ministry, she was the one Harry trusted to bring him real news. He sat up and nodded. “Yes, madam?”  
  
Stone studied him with a faint frown, and then nodded back and said, “Your friends Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger are here to speak with you.”  
  
Harry wanted to close his eyes and melt down the wall, but it wasn’t like that would bring Ron and Hermione closer. He cleared his throat as importantly as he could. “Send them in, please.”  
  
Stone’s brows pinched tighter, but she stepped out and said something to a person waiting in the corridor beyond. Harry saw the swish of a scarlet robe and assumed it was an Auror. Ron and Hermione were probably right _there,_ if they’d been brought under an Auror escort.   
  
But getting up and running towards the door would just convince them that he was dangerous, too. Harry wrung his hands again and leaned back against the wall, his eyes on the cell door, waiting.  
  
Hermione when she came in looked ten times more beautiful than she had at the Yule Ball, and there was Ron behind her, his grin lighting up the room. Harry charged up to them, ignoring the way Stone touched her wand, and hugged them both. He knew that Stone wouldn’t cast a curse at them unless she thought him truly dangerous.   
  
“Thank you,” Harry whispered into Hermione’s hair, and she leaned back and smiled at him, a little. Her eyes were too bright, but Harry knew she wasn’t about to cry in front of Stone and all the rest of them.  
  
“You’re welcome,” Hermione said. “Oh, _Harry_.”  
  
“I know,” Harry said. “It’s not as good as getting me free yet, but it’s something, for you to be here.” He held Hermione’s hand tightly and turned to Ron. “What’s going on out there? Is your family okay? What about Ginny?”  
  
Ron snorted at him. “Ginny’s not the one who got herself arrested because she told everyone about casting the Unforgiveables, mate.”  
  
Harry waved his hand. “Yeah, but she was pretty upset the last time I saw her.” He thought he could say that much without betraying the secret he and Ginny had. They would just think that he was talking about seeing her in the Great Hall before the Aurors took him away.  
  
“She’s fine,” Hermione said, speaking so quickly that Harry decided she probably resented the loss of time. “So are the rest of the Weasleys. A bit shaken up, but there’s no one who was in the Great Hall who isn’t.”  
  
“Except people like Lewis Boot,” Harry muttered.  
  
“He was arrested, just like you, so it doesn’t matter as much what he’s feeling right now.” Hermione studied him with narrowed eyes. “What do you need?”  
  
“News from outside this cell,” Harry said promptly. “But I don’t know if you can bring that to me, or if you want to.”  
  
“What do you want to know?” Hermione took her hand out of his and stood regarding him seriously, as though she was going to charge off and get everything he wanted the instant he said he wanted it. Harry smiled. The shield mark on his arm might bind him to his vassals, but he doubted he would ever find a bond as close and strong with them as he had with his friends.  
  
“Yeah, mate,” Ron added, shaking his head. “ _Want_ to bring it to you. Honestly.”  
  
Harry grinned at him, then turned back to Hermione. “I need to know what the Wizengamot is saying about the arrests, and the Lordship bond, and the end of the war, and all the rest of it. I need to know everything you can find out about the pure-blood Helton family, and this thing called a blood-ghost, which supposedly showed up to attack Malfoy a while ago.” Even as he spoke, a new plan was coming to life in his mind, although it was probably only there because he had done it once before. Harry knew that he wasn’t a strategist. Everything would be a lot easier if he was. “And I need you to carry a message for me.”  
  
“Okay,” Hermione said. She didn’t glance back at Stone because Harry hadn’t, and luckily, Ron was able to keep his eyes under control as well, although they’d widened.  
  
“Find the publisher who decided to publish that biography of Dumbledore that came out last summer,” Harry said, as casually as he could. “I want to make sure that there isn’t going to be any _unauthorized_ biography of me coming out. Nothing that could make me look even worse in the eyes of the public, you know?”  
  
He hoped they would understand him, considering who had written that biography, and they did. Hermione pressed her fingers briefly into Harry’s hand, then said, “I’ll let them know. You’d think that it would be too early to publish a biography, but I’m always amazed at how fast some people write.” She blinked twice at Harry, too fast for it to be natural.  
  
Harry had to smile a little. “Yes. Right. Although that’s a bit rich, Hermione, considering how fast you take notes.”  
  
Hermione rolled her eyes. “You were grateful to take advantage of how fast you could copy them in school,” she said haughtily, and then abruptly hugged Harry one more time, so hard that Harry gasped a little. “Be _careful,_ ” she hissed into Harry’s ear. “Please.”  
  
“I know,” Harry said, and he didn’t have the words to tell her everything about how he would be careful because he had to be, because now it would be his vassals who would pay for any mistake he made as well as him, but Hermione seemed to sense it anyway. She gave him one more squeeze, and stepped out of the way for Ron.  
  
Ron didn’t hug Harry, but he did shake his hand and look into his eyes. “You’ll do this,” he said. “I know that, somehow, you’ll do this.”  
  
Harry could have questioned that, the way he wanted to. He really wanted someone to tell him what to do. Going into the Forbidden Forest had been one of the worst moments of his life, but he had to admit, it had been freeing as well. He was following orders then. There was only one step he could take to defeat Voldemort forever, and once he took it, no one else could scold him or pressure him into doing anything else. More to the point, there was only one right thing to do and he couldn’t make any more mistakes.  
  
But he had to be a leader, and it seemed he would be one for the rest of his life at this rate. He squeezed Ron’s hand back and said, “Please take care of them, Madam Stone.”  
  
“I’ll see that they get safely out of the Ministry,” Stone said in a voice as neutral as the bench behind Harry as she led them away. “There’s nothing else I can do.”  
  
Harry sat back down on the bench when they were gone and spent a moment massaging his wrists. He _thought_ Hermione had understood his message. What was important about that biography of Dumbledore wasn’t who had published it, but who had written it. And the publisher could get a message to her.  
  
Now it just remained to be seen if Rita Skeeter would come to him—and if her beetle Animagus form could dodge the wards and protections the Ministry had put up during the war.  
  
*  
  
“Severus.”  
  
Severus didn’t recognize the glittering white place he opened his eyes to, but that didn’t matter. He knew the voice. And he had no intention of rising to his feet off the soft pallet that he seemed to have appeared on. It was ten times more comfortable than the bench he had gone to sleep on in the Ministry holding cell.  
  
“Severus,” the voice repeated, and the pallet disappeared from beneath him.  
  
Severus heaved himself to his feet, and turned around with a scowl. He saw no reason to pretend that he was anything but displeased by this summons.  
  
Looked at more closely, the glittering white place resolved into a replica of the Great Hall of Hogwarts, though empty of all furniture except a single table and with windows made of faceted diamond. And at the table sat Albus.  
  
Severus thought about lying down and going back to sleep, but the problem was, this _was_ sleep. And he thought he would only wake up into another dream if he did manage to close his eyes.  
  
He took a few steps towards the table, and stopped with his arms folded a considerable distance away. Albus gazed up at him, twinkling as madly as ever. “Why have you stopped, my dear boy?” he asked, and spread his arms. “Is this not a beautiful place?”  
  
“It’s not a place that I wanted,” Severus said quietly, and sat down on the edge of the bench furthest from Albus. For a moment, it twitched, and he thought it would shrink and draw him closer to Albus that way, but it settled and stayed in place. Perhaps Albus was content to talk to him from this distance. “I thought I would die. Then I thought—there would be blackness. Peace. Perhaps Lily again.”  
  
To no one else alive could he have said that, but Albus knew all his dirty little secrets already, and he wasn’t anyone alive. Severus would be surprised if he could contact anyone outside Severus’s head.  
  
 _This could be a dream, too._  
  
If it was, though, it was a persistent one, maybe even one Albus had planted in Severus’s head before he died, to come out only if Severus lived after the war. Severus sighed and leaned back, watching. Albus would say what he had come to say, and nothing would change that.  
  
But Albus sat still, reluctant, it seemed, to say it. Severus watched him trace his fingers in circles on the table. They formed brief, sparkling rings, that then vanished.   
  
“Is this the afterlife?” Severus asked at last, because if Albus had nothing important to say, then maybe he would let Severus go back to sleep. “I disapprove. It has far too much light.”  
  
Albus looked up with a smile that was almost sweet. “No, my dear boy,” he said quietly. “It is not the afterlife, only a half-place that I lingered to speak to those who might need me. You, now. Harry not long ago.” He paused, and fixed Severus with that patient stare he almost always used when he spoke of Potter.  
  
Severus exhaled. “He did die. Or at least the Killing Curse struck his body and that was enough to fool the Dark Lord, and he came to you.”  
  
Albus nodded. “He had a choice. He could have gone on, died in truth. Then there would have been an end of the Dark Lord’s Horcrux, but an end, too, of Harry Potter.” Albus sat up, seeming to draw in the majesty that Severus remembered him so often clothed in. He supposed it was a privilege, of sorts, that Albus had trusted Severus enough to show him his power, rather than the dotty old man that he presented to the public. But considering that he usually showed it when invoking or mentioning the Unbreakable Vows, Severus could have lived without the privilege.  
  
“Harry made the choice, though,” Albus continued. “The harder choice, the more courageous one, to go back and continue fighting and defending. And you made yours, too, Severus.” His gaze was hard enough now that Severus winced. “Which is why I am beyond distressed, my dear boy, to see you doubting your decision now.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Severus demanded. “I lived, but I never thought I would have another master. Both my masters are _dead._ There shouldn’t be any vow or mark to hold me anymore—”  
  
“I’m talking about the decision that you made in the Shrieking Shack,” Albus interrupted.  
  
Severus felt as though his marrow was flinching. He sat still, with his arms folded. It was the only rebellion he could make right now.  
  
“You could have died, when the fangs tore your neck open and Nagini’s poison entered your bloodstream.” Albus cocked his head. “I know that you gave the memories to Harry, that you almost died protecting him and lying to Voldemort. You did all that the vow asked of you.  
  
“But you chose to reach for that bezoar, and for that all-purpose healing potion you invented years ago, the one that can be absorbed through the skin of the palms and collects as condensation on the outside of its vial, for one too weak to break the glass…”  
  
“You weren’t supposed to know about that, you old meddler.” Severus spoke through lips numb with shock, but he knew that Albus had understood him when the fool chuckled.  
  
“Yes, I know,” Albus said. “But you weren’t subtle enough about ordering the dragon’s blood, my boy. I still kept track of shipments and sales of that, in view of my old interest. So I knew where it was going, and once I investigated a little further and learned its purpose, I was content to let you make the potion.”  
  
“Because it might benefit your favorite, of course.” Severus didn’t know his voice would snap like a whip until he heard it.  
  
Albus fell silent abruptly, and then looked straight at Severus and said, “You are exactly right. Benefit someone I cared for. That is the only reason I permitted a potion that powerful, and potentially deadly in Voldemort’s hands, to exist.”  
  
Severus couldn’t deal with what Albus’s words implied, and he turned his head and stared blindly at one of the diamond windows until he thought he had both his tongue and his temper under control. Then he said, “I made the decision to come back to protect Slytherin students that I thought the Dark Lord might blame, in a way, for their actions during the war. Even if your side won, they were likely to be poorly treated.”  
  
“My side?” Albus had that light sound in his voice that he did when he offered someone sweets. “Is it not your side also, Severus?”  
  
“My side consisted of Lily and myself,” Severus said. “Everything else, I was made to vow.”  
  
Silence again. Severus had the impression that he had shocked Albus at last, or saddened him. But it didn’t feel like a triumph. What Severus wanted most was for the white light around him to dim, to become peaceful blackness that he could roll himself in as if it were grass.   
  
Well, no. What he wanted most was for Lily to walk towards him with her hand extended in forgiveness. But he knew he didn’t deserve that, so he would settle for something in reach.  
  
“Severus…I am sorry.”  
  
Albus had said that before. Perhaps not with this tone in his voice, and not in a way that soothed some of the old wounds on Severus’s soul, but he’d said it. Severus refused to let it affect him any more profoundly now. He simply grunted.  
  
“I am,” Albus said. He stood up and walked towards Severus’s position on the bench. Severus clung to his stillness with some effort. He would never have expected something like this. Yes, some things had changed in death—he had already seen that Albus had two whole hands, for example—but the soul couldn’t, and Albus had a soul incapable of yielding.  
  
Yet that man who could not yield knelt in front of Severus and looked up at him, his eyes so somber that Severus nearly reached out to check for a fever. Then he shook his head. He was being ridiculous. Ghosts didn’t get fevers.  
  
“I know you never thought you would be marked and have to serve another master,” Albus began. “But you made the decision to come back, and I would like you to live.” His hand gripped Severus’s knee. “Not only because Harry needs you. Not only because young Mr. Malfoy and the others need you. Because you deserve to _live,_ my boy, and find joy somewhere along the route.”  
  
Severus shut his eyes. He didn’t want to admit that he had wanted this, some sign that Albus cared about him beyond his usefulness in defending Harry or as a spy against the Dark Lord.  
  
 _It is typical of my life that I had to wait until after he was dead to receive it._  
  
“I am sorry,” Albus whispered. “I am sorry for forcing you to kill me.”  
  
Severus did open his eyes in shock at that, and saw the white Great Hall dissolving around him. Albus rose to his feet with a grim set to his mouth, and _that_ had never shown up save on the rare occasions when Albus went to battle.  
  
“I can stay no longer,” Albus said. “You are waking. I do not even know if we will be able to speak to you again.” He held out a hand to Severus, but Severus did not try to take it. He didn’t think it was meant for that. “Please, Severus. Live if you can. I hope you try.”  
  
The whiteness blew away in mist, and Severus was once again turning around on the bench as the wards on his door opened.  
  
This time, it wasn’t Shacklebolt. Two wizards muffled in heavy cloaks entered the room. Severus could see the color of those cloaks, just barely, in the dim light that filled the holding cells at night, and they weren’t Auror robes.  
  
“Take him,” said someone waiting outside the cell, a voice that croaked and hissed the way someone would under an auditory glamour. “But be careful not to hurt him.” There was a pause, while Severus leaned in and the two cloaked wizards seemed uncertain of what to do, and then the disguised voice added, “ _Tranquillus_.”  
  
 _Oh, very good,_ Severus thought distantly, as the Calming Charm fell on him and subdued his emotions to a distant, drifting grey haze. This was the reason a potion was usually used instead, because a Calming Charm left a person almost incapable of feeling or speaking. But it would work perfectly to keep the Lordship bond from alerting Potter with any discomfort or fear on Severus’s part.  
  
His head flopping, a layer of velvet between him and the world, Severus barely felt the cloaked wizards pick him up. Then they were out the cell door, hurrying him down the corridor in search of places unknown.  
  
*  
  
Harry had to look away when the beetle crawled under the door into his cell and then transformed. Not even McGonagall was pleasant to look at when she was coming out of her Animagus form, but Skeeter seemed to take longer at it. Harry wondered if that was because she’d been an unregistered Animagus and hadn’t dared practice a quick Transfiguration.  
  
“Thank you for coming to see me,” Harry said, determined that he would be polite.  
  
Skeeter stood up and patted at her hair for a few moments. Making him wait, Harry was sure. Then she took out a quill and a sheet of parchment and faced him, holding both of them up like weapons.  
  
“Why did you choose to call me on, Mr. Potter?” she asked, fastidious. “As you know, I’m much more of a biographer now than a reporter.”  
  
Harry widened his eyes. “Oh, but I was thinking of your future business, rather than your past one.”  
  
That caught Skeeter off-guard, the way he’d intended. He’d known he would have to bargain with her. The only difference was that what he could offer would probably persuade her with no harm to himself or his vassals, unlike the things he could offer to the Aurors who protected him.  
  
“Oh?” Skeeter said at last, when she seemed to realize that Harry wasn’t rushing into telling her what he meant. “Why do you think so?”  
  
Harry smiled at her. “Because someone who spread around some interviews that caused trouble for the Ministry right now might impress me. I might think they were at least a _little_ on my side. I might let them write my biography later, after the trials.”  
  
Skeeter stood up straighter before she could stop herself. Then she leaned back against the cell wall—not near the door, luckily, which still shimmered with wards and the other spells the Aurors were using to stop Harry from getting out—and watched Harry with a weird expression on her face.  
  
“What?” Harry asked. He’d thought she would either ask questions or jump right to agreement, not do this.  
  
“I’ve heard some people talk about you doing this since the Lordship bond started,” Skeeter observed, and Harry kept from rolling his eyes. _Yeah, right, she’s not a reporter, when she got that much information in a few days._ “You offer gifts that you never would have before. You _bargain._ Is it the bond making you politically savvy?”  
  
Harry thought about that, then shrugged. “Maybe. I already know that the bond will help me take care of my vassals, and if it needs to tell me things about them or adjust my thinking, then it will.” His spine crawled as he thought that, but he knew now that he’d been foolish to listen to Kislik. Unless there was actually a spell that would break the bond with no negative consequences for _anyone,_ he didn’t want to use it. “But I think a lot of it is just the saving-people thing that Hermione always told me I had.”  
  
Skeeter’s lips twitched. “Ah. Your martyr complex.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “No. I’m not just making sacrifices to take care of the whole world, now, or a few of my friends. It’s my vassals.” He grinned at Skeeter. “And when you make deals and trade favors for other favors, my impression was that it was called _politics_.”  
  
Skeeter laughed. “I find you much more interesting and relatable than I did before, Harry Potter,” she murmured. “Or should I call you by your title?”  
  
Harry shuddered. “No, thanks.”  
  
He saw Skeeter’s eyes gleaming, and knew she had probably noticed the shudder and was filing it away. But she said, “All right. I can’t start the book until after the trials. What are the other restrictions?”  
  
Harry met her eyes. “You say whatever you like about me. Look up dirty secrets, whatever. I’ll even help. But you only say positive things about my vassals, or I’ll do whatever I can to stop you.”  
  
Skeeter only nodded. If she was scared of the threat, Harry really couldn’t tell. She took out her quill. “Then let’s begin on the interview portion now, shall we?”   
  



	16. Blood Bargains

  
Pansy didn’t know where she was, but she didn’t like it.  
  
She kept quiet for the moment, though, just peering out around the edges of the Obscuring Ward that someone had bound over her head. Whoever had done this wasn’t very good at it. They left the corners visible, and the ward wavered up and down like a flag in the breeze, rather than mimicking a perfect black hood the way it was meant to.  
  
She could see the changing shadows and orange color that she associated with firelight, and hear low voices talking and footsteps passing back and forth. Behind her was a wall that felt like solid stone. Her hands were bound in front of her, the rope having a small gleam that Pansy thought was probably a sort of alarm in case she tried to undo it. She still seemed to be wearing the robes she’d gone to prison in, and that made her want to wrinkle her nose. She was overdue for a shower.  
  
But she wanted to know what the hell was going on more than she wanted to be clean. She turned her head the slightest bit to one side, and the firelight tilted with her. Pansy thought she could make out a giant door, maybe made of iron or dark wood banded with iron.  
  
She grimaced a little. She didn’t remember the wizards who had snatched her from the cell distinctly; she thought they’d Confunded her. She knew that she’d started to stand, to fight and panic, but someone had hit her with a spell that stopped all that.  
  
“Parkinson.”  
  
Probably no word other than her name could have made Pansy decide she was really hearing _that_ and not someone mumbling incoherently. It was that soft. She tilted her head slowly back in acknowledgment, not trying to see in the direction the voice was coming from—her right.  
  
“Zabini,” said the owner of the voice. “And I think Malfoy is over there. Do you know where we are?”  
  
“No,” Pansy said, her own voice a little thread of sound. “What did they do when they took you?”  
  
“Came in, asked if I wanted to be free of Ministry control, and then hit me with a Calming Charm,” Zabini muttered. “I don’t know why they bothered. Yes, I want to be free of Ministry control, and I wanted to be free of Potter. I would have followed them in a hot second.”  
  
Pansy thought a second, but although the remnants of the Calming Charm still clung about her brain, making her thoughts loose and foggy, she decided why a few seconds later. “They don’t want us to escape,” she whispered. “Or, I mean, that’s not _really_ what they want. They wanted to be sure that the Lordship bond couldn’t sense we were in danger and have Potter follow us. It would have, if one of us panicked.”  
  
Silence from Zabini. Pansy turned her head towards him, rustling it along the stone as if naturally turning it in her sleep, but she still couldn’t see much, just a solid black blur.  
  
“So Potter might not even know we’re gone.” An undercurrent of _something_ in Zabini’s voice, too low for Pansy to identify.  
  
“I think he will shortly, now that we’re awake,” Pansy said. “He could follow you into the Forest when he didn’t know beforehand where you were going. If we’re in danger and awake, then he knows.”  
  
“Maybe I ought to go back to sleep.”  
  
Pansy didn’t get the chance to ask him whether he was joking. Someone marched towards her, crouched down in front of her, and dispelled the Obscuring Ward.  
  
“Sincerely sorry for this,” said the white-haired man in front of her, who had a beard so long that it touched the stone floor. “But we can’t have you warning someone who’s dangerous to us.” He touched his wand to Pansy’s temple and whispered the Calming Charm.  
  
Pansy, in the moment before she went soft-headed again, clung to a scrap of what she knew about Lordship bonds, or thought she knew.  
  
 _We were awake, and I was aware that we could be in danger and upset about being where I was. That might be enough._  
  
*  
  
Harry sat up, clapping his hand to his right arm. His shield mark was _blazing,_ so much so that he almost expected his palm to be charred when he pulled it back.  
  
There was nothing there. Harry eyed the mark for a moment, then considered the green dots around the edges of the silver shield. He hadn’t paid attention to the mark all during his interview with Skeeter, except holding up his arm so she could snap photographs, because there was no sense of danger from or to any of his vassals. He had thought that they were probably doing what he was doing, sitting in cells and anticipating their next meal, although they didn’t have as interesting a time of it as he did.  
  
But this…  
  
Harry still didn’t know much about the Lordship bond, about what he could do and what he couldn’t. And the heat that filled his arm this time was almost neutral. It was nothing like the intense tugging that had taken over when he followed Zabini into the Forbidden Forest. Or the spike of flame that had touched him when Draco was confronting the blood-ghost and needed Harry to save his life.  
  
It was intense, though. What was he supposed to do? Harry slumped back against the wall and breathed, focusing on the shield mark.  
  
“Lord Potter? What are you doing?” Skeeter had called him that throughout the interview, probably because it would make the eventual article she printed and the book she wrote about him sound more impressive.  
  
This time, Harry ignored her. He didn’t think that this could be hurried, whatever it was. He slid his palm over the shield mark, from top to bottom, and thought, _Show me where they are. Show me!_  
  
When he took his hand away, he noticed that the shield’s color had brightened, the silver turning the shade of a mirror. Harry bent towards it, and a reflection of his face moved in the skin-branded metal. He breathed out, and his breath fogged on the surface, too, the way it would on a mirror on a cold day.  
  
Then the fog slid away, or became part of the picture, and Harry could see a cloudy image. It was a cavern, he thought, or at least someone’s underground house; the stone walls were too regular for it to be a natural cave. A huge door banded with iron and shimmering with protective spells was set over a hole in the earth, and steps led down it. The door was at an angle compared to the rest of the room, which made it hard for Harry to sort out the perspective and make sense of what he was seeing for a second.  
  
There were five shapes set along the wall, all of them with Obscuring Charms around their heads and their hands bound in front of them. Harry could make out Draco’s limp hair, Snape’s height and even limper dangling head, Zabini’s hands, Parkinson’s slumped shoulders, and only a little of Goyle’s face.  
  
The wizards moving around the big fire in the center of the room all had their hoods back, but Harry didn’t recognize them, either. They were older, for the most part, with white hair and beards, but that might not mean anything.  
  
 _No. It means something._  
  
A different kind of fire was rising inside Harry, one that had little or nothing to do with the shield mark. With every breath he took, the heat grew more intense, roasting his ribs from the inside, bearing his heart up on a wave of flame.  
  
 _Someone took them. Someone took them and they’re going to threaten them and me and it’s nothing they did._  
  
This time, Harry was utterly _sure_ that all his vassals had been cursed and taken somewhere else because they were connected to _him_ , not because they were Death Eaters or Slytherins. Some of the wizards around that fire might be Slytherins, although Harry thought they were more likely to be Wizengamot members or their friends, so old they had gone to Hogwarts a long time ago.  
  
They had taken the five people connected to Harry, not the elder Malfoys. Not all the people who had come to the Ministry with him. Not even his friends.  
  
 _They didn’t have any right to do that._  
  
“Lord Potter?” Skeeter’s voice had an eager, sharp tone that made Harry look back at her. “What are you seeing?”  
  
Harry turned back to the shield mark, angry enough to describe it, and then paused. The image had vanished from his skin, and even the mirror-brightness had faded. So had the heat. Harry reached out and tried to polish up the shield mark the way he would glass, but it just sat there under his hand, just skin.  
  
“I don’t know, exactly,” Harry said, trying to reach out and feel for his vassals the way he could before. Nothing happened. Had the people he’d seen found some way of blocking the Lordship bond? Or at least the way Harry could _feel_ people along the Lordship bond? It explained why Harry hadn’t known that his vassals were gone until now, even though it must have taken the wizards who’d kidnapped them a while to collect them all, Stun them, and take to that place. “But I really need you to publish that interview as soon as possible.”  
  
Skeeter agreeably started packing up her parchment and quills. “And you’ll tell me about this the next time?”  
  
“Maybe the time after that.” Harry was on his feet, pacing back and forth as he thought. If he couldn’t feel his vassals, did that mean the bond wouldn’t give him any help in getting out of this cell to find them? Or did he just have to know how to ask it, the way the bond had shown his vassals in his skin when Harry had asked it to show him?  
  
“I must say,” Skeeter said, standing up and giving Harry a look that was impossible to interpret, “I like you _much_ better like this, when you’re willing to cooperate with me. I could have made you a star long ago if you had said you wanted it.”  
  
“Before this, you weren’t worth cooperating with.”  
  
Skeeter opened her mouth a little. Then she studied his face, said, “This will be interesting,” and changed back into a beetle and scuttled under the door.  
  
Harry turned his attention to the shield mark again. Maybe he would pay for that remark later, and maybe he wouldn’t. The important thing was that he needed to figure out a way to consult the bond, _now,_ and get moving so that he could rescue his vassals before someone started torturing them.  
  
Harry touched the shield mark with a finger in the center of it. Nothing happened. He worked his fingers around the outside, touching each of the green dots in turn. Still nothing. Harry nodded. They _had_ done something to block the Lordship bond. When he’d done that before, even though it was absent-minded, he had known who each of the dots represented. Now, Malfoy’s dot might as well be Parkinson’s.  
  
Okay. So. He had asked the bond for help by accident before. What would happen if he did the same thing on purpose?  
  
He put his hand on the shield mark and said, “Get me out of here.”  
  
Nothing happened, again. Harry sighed. The bond didn’t think they were in danger, so it wouldn’t help him that way.  
  
“Please?” Harry added.  
  
Nothing.  
  
“Lead me to my vassals.” Harry tried to sound strong and confident, the way he imagined a Lord would sound, and the dots began to heat up on his arm. Harry bit back a gasp and watched eagerly.  
  
The dots fell into a line on his shield, all of them aiming at the same place, at least to Harry’s inexperienced eyes—the right lower corner of the mark. Then they turned and whirled and clustered together, forming one tiny clump of emerald on his skin.  
  
And then they stopped moving.  
  
Harry threw his hands up in the air and took another turn around his cell. _Damn it._ He was without his friends, without his wand—because of his “brilliant” plan to let the Aurors arrest him—and without anyone he would trust to ally with him. Skeeter would spread the word, but even if she was capable of somehow taking him with her when she changed into a beetle, Harry doubted she would. Too much risk for her, not enough reward.  
  
 _Who says I’m not a good judge of character?_  
  
There was…one more possibility. It could be dangerous, in fact, it almost certainly was, but Hermione hadn’t come back to tell him anything about it yet. And Harry didn’t know what else to do.  
  
He cleared his throat and tried to sound as impressive as he could when he announced, “I call forth the blood-ghost of the Helton line.” That was the only thing he knew to refer to the man as. If he had a name, Hermione could probably discover it, but she wasn’t here right now.  
  
The air in front of him wavered and turned slowly to steam. Harry squinted and did his best to see through it. He knew the blood-ghost had formed a solid enough body to attack Draco once before. There was no need for him to appear with all these dramatics, Harry thought. He fell back against the bench and waited, folding his arms.  
  
The blood-ghost came into being so slowly that Harry thought he was probably reluctant. Too fucking bad. If he could use him to find his vassals, then Harry would. The blood-ghost was the one who had insisted that his purpose was to protect and help the last person with any sort of Helton blood in them.  
  
“What do you wish?” The ghost’s voice was low and wary, and the only thing Harry could see under his hood as it peered at him was the green eyes.  
  
“I want to find my vassals,” Harry said. “Someone took them prisoner and removed them from the Ministry. I managed to get a vision of them sitting in a large stone room around a fire, but whoever took them must have blocked the bond somehow, because I can’t feel their emotions or get a good sense of their direction.”  
  
The ghost half-shook its head. Harry thought he heard the hood rustling, but it remained unsubstantial, so maybe not. “I would say that is a good thing. It means that you will soon be rid of the binding of the Malfoy heir to you.”  
  
Harry snorted. “Then you know some way of breaking the Lordship bond that no one else does?” He had to pause and think about that a second later. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. The blood-ghost was from a long time back, and people might have had more magical knowledge about Lordship bonds then.  
  
“No,” the ghost said. “I think they will kill the Malfoy, and then you will be free from that encumbrance.”  
  
Harry sneered at him. The ghost, as much as Harry could see of his face, looked startled. “Fat lot you know,” Harry said, folding his arms. “They took my vassals from me as quietly as they could, and they didn’t hurt them. I _know_ they didn’t, because I would have felt their pain. The mark on my arm was warm, but it didn’t burn the way it would if they were in danger.”  
  
“Perhaps the block they put on the bond blocks that, as well,” the blood-ghost pointed out, a helpful little lilt in his voice. “Perhaps they are torturing them to death right now, and you can’t feel it.”  
  
Harry choked back the desire to shout at the idiot. The blood-ghost was the only idea he had right now. “Maybe,” he said. “But they looked unhurt in the vision I had of them. Besides, if my enemies kill them, they lose any hold they have on me.”  
  
“What would they want to force you to do?”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Probably some kind of political non-interference. I scared the Wizengamot when I talked to them, and they don’t like the idea of me running around being both the Boy-Who-Lived _and_ a Lord. The best thing to do is keep my vassals hostage, because then I can’t act for fear of harming them.”  
  
The blood-ghost shook his head, so slowly that Harry didn’t hear his hood this time. “I cannot help you,” he said. “I am only sworn to our line to protect you from the machinations of Malfoys, who hurt our family so badly.”  
  
“Then answer me another question,” Harry snarled. “Why didn’t you help me when Lucius Malfoy threatened me before?”  
  
“He was not the end of the line,” the blood-ghost said.  
  
“Presume that I don’t understand _anything_ of what you’re going to say,” Harry snapped at him.  
  
“He is not the end of the line,” the blood-ghost repeated. “It would avail nothing to harm him, not when he had a son who could continue the work of engendering Malfoys. I had to wait for a time when his son was a burden on you, and near the place of my power, in order to manifest and deal with him.”  
  
“You’ve got a _twisted_ sense of responsibility,” Harry said, staring at the green dots on his arm, the clump of green, and trying to figure out again why he didn’t feel anything more than that intense warmth. If one of his vassals died and he could have protected them, would he die, too? What about all of them? He hadn’t had Hermione read up on that, because the world had been going mad in too many other ways.  
  
“I am meant to deal with Malfoys,” the blood-ghost said. “Not with anything else.”  
  
“Right, you said,” Harry muttered. “And you won’t deal with helping me rescue this Malfoy, because he’s the end of his line.”  
  
“Yes,” said the blood-ghost.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t know what to do, and the thought galled him. What would his vassals feel and think, as they felt death closing in around them and didn’t know why he couldn’t come? If he was—  
  
Then something else the blood-ghost had said finally caught up with him, or Harry caught up with it. He sat up, staring. “Near the place of your power,” he whispered. “The place of your power is the _Ministry_?”  
  
The blood-ghost went still.  
  
“It is,” Harry said. “Although that still doesn’t explain why you didn’t interfere when Lucius attacked me in the Department of Mysteries.”  
  
“He was not—”  
  
“Right, then _that_ does.” Harry waved his hand. His mind was racing, and strange, inchoate thoughts whirled around and around. “Look. Would you—would you be able to attack someone else in these cells, if Draco wasn’t the end of his line?”  
  
“He is.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “I asked you if you _could,_ not if you _would_.”  
  
The blood-ghost seemed to mull over his answer for a long time before he gave it, as though he wanted to be sure that there was absolutely nothing in it that would help Harry. “Yes,” he finally said.  
  
“Good,” Harry said. “And if you could attack someone else, then you could manifest and speak to them. Then I want you to carry a message to Lucius Malfoy, and ask if he’s willing to sacrifice himself to save his son.”  
  
The blood-ghost was so silent, so still, that Harry thought it had disappeared until he looked up again. Then the blood-ghost said, “You are—asking him to perform an exchange. You are asking him to become my victim, the Malfoy who would exorcise the blood vengeance that his family owes the Helton line, in place of his son.”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said simply. “And I’m asking you to accept the bargain, because Draco is far away now and might not ever return to become your victim, but Lucius is here, and he _could_.”  
  
“But there is nothing he can do for you, not if his son is far away,” the blood-ghost said. “He does not even have the power to pass between one cell and another here, as I do.”  
  
Harry licked his lips. “I think he might be able to do something. Can you _carry_ things between one cell and another?”  
  
“Yes.” Less hesitation on the answer this time, as if the blood-ghost was interested in getting _one_ Malfoy victim to kill.  
  
“Then you could bring back some of his—his blood,” Harry said. He was striking wildly in the dark now, his mind more full of images of the ritual Voldemort had used to come back than anything else. But blood was powerful, wasn’t it? And everyone, the blood-ghost included, was always going on about how it linked the family. “His blood might allow me to get a hold on Draco and find him that way.”  
  
Silence, so deep and thick that Harry could hear the sound of the blood-ghost shaking his hood again. “You cannot think that Lucius Malfoy will sacrifice himself for his son.”  
  
“How well do you know him?” Harry demanded. “Well enough to make up stories about him, it seems, but not _that_ well, not if he didn’t come near the Ministry holding cells often. But I saw him during the Battle of Hogwarts. I know what he would do for his son.”  
  
The blood-ghost was silent. Then he pulled back his hood and his green eyes fixed on Harry once more. “He would agree to give you his blood and let you find his son in any case. But why should he agree to become my victim?”  
  
“Because I need to bribe you to carry the blood and the message between cells,” Harry said simply. “And that’s your price.”  
  
“I cannot change my nature.” There was what might be a very slight sneer of apology in the blood-ghost’s voice.  
  
“I know,” Harry said. “But you can carry the message for me, and see what he says. Remember not to let anyone see you.”  
  
“I have existed centuries without that happening,” the blood-ghost said, and flickered away.  
  
Harry sat down in the center of his cell and sighed. His brain was racing, his arm was burning, but part of him wanted to collapse into a dark hole and never come out. What was Draco going to say when he found out what Harry had asked Lucius to do? What about the rest of them? What about Lucius?  
  
The problem, though, was that no one else was here to help him or tell him what a good plan was. He had to do it himself.  
  
He was dozing when he felt someone else in the cell with him. He lifted his head and opened his eyes.  
  
It was the blood-ghost, and in one hand he held a potions vial filled with gleaming blood.  
  
“He agrees,” said the blood-ghost simply, and gave the vial to Harry.  
  



	17. Resistance

  
Severus let his head droop, his eyes working at the edges of the Obscuring Ward that they had magicked back into place after the Calming Charm, no more darkly than before. That increased his certainty that this was no sophisticated band of kidnappers, but one assembled in haste, and the person who had cast the Obscuring Ward was the best in the group without necessarily being skillful at it.  
  
Not skillful, either, not to notice that he had started to resist and recover from the Calming Charm within a very short time. On the other hand, perhaps they did not know that Severus was a skilled Legilimens. And Severus had always found it easy to excuse mistakes his enemies made that benefited him.  
  
He tested the ropes that bound his wrists, flexing his hands casually back and forth. The bright light he had seen on them before followed the movement, but didn’t give an alarm. Severus half-sneered. Someone _had_ cast a spell that gave an alarm at every movement, but only until they got sick of being troubled by the Slytherin students rolling over or sighing in their sleep or breathing more deeply than normal. Then they had replaced it with a less powerful spell that would give warning only in case of an attack. Nothing in between seemed to have occurred to them.  
  
Severus closed his eyes and retreated into himself. The Aurors had taken his wand when he was escorted into the Ministry, of course, but they had not conducted a thorough enough search of his pockets, and there was no taking the weapons that were inside the mind. Except with the Calming Charm or similar spells, which Severus had to admit was a clever tactic.  
  
But spells wore off, while the ability to use Occlumency in the way that Severus did now did not.  
  
Severus sank deep into his own mind. The training he had received in Occlumency, first from books and then from Albus, almost all concentrated on knowing himself, his own desires and thoughts and interests, both so that he could form effective shields and so that he could recognize when a force from outside was trying to influence him.   
  
He could have done this before now, if he had bothered to think and find the silence he needed for it. But even if he had been left alone for long enough, Severus had to acknowledge, he might not have managed it. His head was swarming and swimming and spinning with thoughts, and he needed to banish them to finish this.  
  
He sank, and when he was at the bottom of himself, behind the Occlumency shields that he kept in place at all times as well as the shields that locked away certain memories, he opened his eyes.  
  
 _Yes._ There was a light in him that had not been there before, as startling and unexpected as the glow of some deep-sea fish at the bottom of the underwater abyss. Severus reached towards it.  
  
It was the Lordship bond.  
  
He saw it as silver and black, but a radiant black that illuminated the still depths around him where once there had been nothing but quiet, the kind of focus he could bring to bear on a difficult potion. Severus walked around it, noting its form, a chain, and the way it reached away into his thoughts, slowly reshaping them, the way a chain could cause marks on a wrist the longer it rested there.  
  
For the moment, Severus could not worry about how it might choose to deform his thoughts. The more aware he became of it, the more he could resist it.  
  
And he had other concerns now.  
  
He reached out and stroked the bond with a long finger of thought. It tingled at him, and then simply lay there and shone. So much for the notion that he could send a message to his Lord simply by touching it.   
  
There might be another way to break free, though. If he worked at it.  
  
And right now, silence and focus would only benefit his plan.  
  
*  
  
Harry held up the vial of blood. It shimmered a little, but otherwise looked like normal blood, and he didn’t think the blood-ghost would have much reason to trick him. Lucius was the only Malfoy here at the moment.  
  
 _Well, other than Narcissa._ But the blood-ghost seemed excessively concerned with members born to a family, not just those who had the name, or else Harry thought it would probably have gone away forever when the last person with the name Helton died out.  
  
He took a deep breath and uncapped the vial. He flinched a little when the blood dripped onto the skin of his palm, but so what? He could flinch all he liked, and it still wouldn’t change what he had to do.  
  
He turned around and slapped the blood on his shield mark.  
  
There was a hissing noise, as though the skin was a hot stovetop he’d spilled water on, and the shield darkened. The clump of green dots turned red, even though Harry had deliberately applied the blood to a different part of the shield than the one that held them. Harry found himself holding his breath without meaning to, and drove it out of his lungs with a grunt. Now wasn’t the time to be concentrating on anything but how he would use the blood to track Draco down.  
  
He closed his eyes. He could feel the shield heating and cooling in random patterns, probably in reaction to the blood. At least that was stirring the magic of the bond up, and he hoped it would be in a way that his enemies hadn’t thought to block. Where was Harry going to get the blood of anyone related to his vassals, locked up in a cell?  
  
 _I want to show them that they deserve to suffer, for underestimating me.  
  
_ And maybe that was the bond, but maybe it wasn’t. Harry had felt the same irritation racing through him when the Ministry had turned against him in fifth year. He just wanted people to _listen_ for once, and stop acting like he was a stupid kid. Did they have to be afraid of stupid kids?  
  
 _Take me to the nearest vassal who has the same kind of blood as this,_ he told the shield. He could feel the bond beginning to tighten around him like a constrictor. He ignored that, and what he thought were the watching eyes of the blood-ghost. _Take me!_  
  
There was a long release of tension, and then Harry bounced through the darkness as though he was on one end of a string and his vassals were on the other. Long after he expected to crash into a wall if he was still in the cell, he kept going.  
  
Harry smiled and opened his eyes as light flickered into being around him. He had no wand, but that wasn’t much of a problem, when everyone around him turned and stared at him in astonishment.  
  
“Hi,” he said, and tackled the nearest wizard, snatching his wand and whirling around to face the nearest group.  
  
*  
  
Severus released his hold on the bond with a gasp. He had felt it reel and snap tight, and knew he had pulled Potter to them—well, if he was lucky, that was what had happened. Perhaps he had damaged his mind and the bond instead.   
  
But he could hear yells, and Potter’s voice saying, “Hi,” and he reckoned it had worked.  
  
He opened his eyes and exerted his will to smash through the Obscuring Ward, something he could have done at any time with his mind free but hadn’t wanted to until there was a purpose.  
  
Potter had blocked several Stunners from the wizards around him and Stunned several of them in turn. He was backing around the fire towards Severus and the other prisoners, his color so high that he looked as if he had a fever. And the whole time, he was smiling.  
  
 _Of course he would be,_ Severus thought, and shook his head. He did not think the boy understood the seriousness of battle, most of the time. He had survived so far, so he thought he would always survive. It was the same lack of thought that had led him to stepping in the way of the Dark Lord’s obedience curse.  
  
But since Severus’s life was now tied to his, merely sitting still and thinking sarcastically about Potter’s lack of caution would not help. Severus waited a moment, and then surged to his feet, rolling down again as several of the combatants turned and aimed their wands at him. Spells cracked the stone above his head, and he grimaced. _So much for the belief that they would not need to hurt us._  
  
His Slytherins were still confined by the Obscuring Wards and the Calming Charms, it seemed, and if they were not, gave no signs of moving. Severus considered very fast. The mind arts were rarely of use as offensive weapons, because they could cause as much pain to the person wielding them as to the wizard they were directed against.   
  
But Severus knew one way, the same way he had “trained” Potter in Occlumency towards the end of the lessons. He had only to catch someone’s eye…  
  
A wizard with a trailing beard hurried towards him. Severus caught his gaze, and dived inside.  
  
There were a few pitiful Occlumency barriers that Severus smashed through easily. They didn’t hurt. What did was digging into the core of the man’s mind, seizing control of his memories and overwhelming him with them until he crumbled to the floor of the cave-cellar, screaming.  
  
But then it did not matter, because Severus had the man’s wand, and he could make his enemies hurt in another way.  
  
*  
  
Snape was up and striking back, Harry saw from the corner of his eye. Good. That meant at least one of his vassals could defend themselves.  
  
But the others were still sitting there with their heads dangling and their hands bound, and whether they were too afraid or whether they were injured, Harry didn’t know. He was having enough trouble with the emotions that surged through his mind without tracing everyone’s individual feelings.  
  
He could feel the bond whispering to him, pulling at him, urging him to avenge the insults to his vassals and his honor. He wanted to kill the wizards he was fighting, not just Stun them. And there was the chance that he would miss and get Stunned himself if he didn’t kill them.  
  
But he also wanted to leave them alive to question them, and he didn’t want to be a murderer, and he didn’t know what good killing them would do. It would just make him into a murderer as well as someone who had used the Unforgiveables during the war.  
  
He whirled and cast the Stunner again and again, and spent a lot of time dodging, and gritted his teeth against the way that his arm had heated up. He knew the shield mark would calm down again if he did what it wanted.  
  
 _Why should I? It didn’t do what_ I _wanted until I smeared it with blood!_  
  
Maybe that was a stupid way to think of it, but it kept him sane in the face of the longing to kill. And now Snape was taking down wizards by, apparently, stringing their hair around their ankles and tripping them up that way, and Harry felt a little reassured. One of his vassals was safe. He didn’t have to kill because Snape wasn’t.  
  
Of course, that only went well until someone got desperate.  
  
“Potter! Drop your wand or I’ll do it!”  
  
Harry whirled around, blocking another Stunner with a Shield Charm. A wizard with grey hair that fell almost to his waist and red robes that blazed in the dim cellar was crouching beside Pansy. His wand rested on her throat. Pansy herself stayed so still Harry didn’t know whether it was good sense or fear or unconsciousness that held her quiet.  
  
“You won’t do it,” Harry said, while the whirling anger in his head coalesced and started to build, and he saw Snape turning around out of the corner of his eye. Harry’s head was light with his fury, and his hand trembled on the stolen wand. It hadn’t really resisted him so far, just worked with him, and that was good. That was _fine._  
  
If this idiot threatened to cut Pansy’s throat, Harry wasn’t sure how long he could hold on to the more violent impulses he’d been fighting.  
  
“Won’t I?” The wizard held Pansy’s head closer to his neck and firmed his hold on his own wand. “Well, maybe I won’t if you put down your wand and swear that you won’t participate in politics. That’s the only thing we wanted, the only reason we snatched your vassals. We—”  
  
At this point, Pansy bit him in the throat.  
  
The wizard shrieked, and Harry Disarmed him. Snape cast a Summoning Charm on the wand at the same time. Harry didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. As long as the wand was out of the way and the idiot couldn’t use it, then Harry would be happy.  
  
He cast _Incarcerous_ on the wizard instead, and then hurried over to Pansy. Most of the other wizards had started Disapparating or backed off, staring, hovering. Harry wondered what they were waiting for. Did they think there was still a chance they could win? Or maybe they wanted to see what he would do now that someone had challenged him directly and he had seen one of his vassals in danger.  
  
Well, maybe that had _something_ to do with it, Harry finally realized as he crouched next to Pansy, but more of it had to do with the enormous black snake that Snape had conjured in front of his own feet. It reared up and flicked its tongue at the wizards, ready to lunge. It probably could do it before any of them could Disapparate, Harry thought. Good.  
  
He wanted some prisoners to question.  
  
He cast a quick _Finite_ on the black spell around Pansy’s face and the ropes on her wrists. But the ropes didn’t disappear, as they weren’t magical, so he had to slice through them with a Cutting Curse instead. By then, Pansy was shaking her hair back and running a hand through it, as though the blinding spell had also disordered it.  
  
“Are you all right?” Harry asked, considering her as closely as he could. This close, he could sort out her emotions from the thick group of them in the back of the bond. She pulsed, she burned, but Harry didn’t think it was with the particular kind of burning that would come when she was hurt.   
  
“Shaken,” Pansy said. “Bruised. But all right.” She glanced off to the side. “You might want to make sure of Goyle, though. I don’t think he’s moved since they brought him here.”  
  
Harry nodded and stood up, looking at Snape. “Can you hold them for a little while?”  
  
“Yes,” Snape said simply. “I have raised anti-Apparition wards. No one else will be getting in or out.” He looked at Harry, a brief glance, and then looked back—not at the wizards he was holding captive, but the snake.  
  
Either Harry was getting better at communicating with his vassals or the bond added some extra backing to Snape’s statement, because Harry knew what Snape meant without having to ask. He nodded at the snake. “ _Hold them_ ,” he said in Parseltongue, making sure that he focused on the serpent and didn’t say it aloud in English. “ _If one of them moves, then you have my permission to bite them._ ”  
  
The snake turned the upper part of its body towards him and inclined it in a little bow, while some of the newly captive wizards began to shriek at the sound of Harry’s hissing. Harry smirked, cast _Finite_ on the spells on Draco and Zabini, and then dropped to his knees in front of Goyle.   
  
Once again, it was easier to feel what was going on with a particular vassal when he was near them. He wasn’t sure that he _had_ been close to Goyle, so far, not by himself. But he saw what Pansy meant. There was a disturbing blankness coming down the bond, as though Goyle had found a way to block it.  
  
Harry took off the blinding charm, and Goyle stared past him, his eyes fixed and unblinking.  
  
Harry waved his hand up and down in front of Goyle’s eyes, his heart sinking. Then he cast an _Rennervate._ It didn’t work. Goyle was breathing, but he seemed to have gone into some kind of deep shock.  
  
Harry listened to the bond, and rubbed the shield mark, and that didn’t help, either. He grimaced and stood up. He only knew one other person in the room who was skilled with Legilimency, which meant he would have to call Snape to figure out what was wrong with Goyle and take over control of the snake himself.  
  
“Let me.”  
  
Harry started and almost drew his wand as he watched Draco kneel down beside Goyle. Then he relaxed, a little. Draco was Goyle’s friend. He might not know what to do as effectively as Snape, but Harry could be sure he wouldn’t hurt him.  
  
And hadn’t Draco received some Occlumency training from Bellatrix or something? Harry turned around to keep an eye on the wizards who had kidnapped his vassals, his body between them and Draco. He would let Draco do what he could, and only insist on taking them back to the Ministry if Draco had to give up.  
  
*  
  
 _Come on, Greg._  
  
Draco took a deep breath and picked up Greg’s hands. They were as cold and as pale as his face. He had seen some Death Eater prisoners get like this sometimes, after long sessions of torture.  
  
But he didn’t think Greg had been tortured, at least not in the conventional way and by these people. And the symptoms also fit another condition he had learned about as part of his Occlumency training.  
  
Draco didn’t want to go into Greg’s mind. He didn’t want to search for the horrible memories that his aunt had told him might cause the condition like this, so prominent in someone’s thoughts that they shut their thoughts down to avoid them, and he didn’t want to smash through them and allow other memories to circulate instead.  
  
But he didn’t think he had much choice. Professor Snape was occupied right now, and no one else knew Greg well enough to do this, even if they had the right skills.  
  
Draco met Greg’s eyes and murmured, “ _Legilimens._ ”  
  
The surface of Greg’s eyes seemed to tremble and break around him, like the surface of a pond that he was diving beneath. Then Draco had the alien sensation of passing in. He shuddered. He usually experienced this from the other way around, as Bellatrix or the Dark Lord pawed through his thoughts.  
  
But both of them were gone now. He hadn’t forgotten that. He forged ahead, and stepped into Fiendfyre.  
  
Of course that was the horrible memory that filled Greg’s thoughts. It wasn’t a _surprise._ But it made Draco flinch and want to hide, because he had been there, too, and he saw, again and again, Vincent disappearing into the flames as the two of them were lifted to safety.  
  
It wasn’t easy, it was horrible, but Draco gathered up his memories of the Slytherin common room since the end of the battle, and even Potter. Potter who had been there in the fire, too, who was only a distant disappearing figure in Greg’s memories, and whose bond could be a promise of peace.  
  
He threw the images at Greg, the image of them sitting in the Slytherin common room and laughing at Gryffindors, and the image of Potter looming between them and the curse the Dark Lord had cast, his eyes so wide that it hurt to look into them. Draco pushed and shoved them into the Fiendfyre, soaking the imaginary flames, building over them, forcing Greg’s obsessive memories further and further back.  
  
It hurt. The Fiendfyre didn’t burn, but there was pain in Greg’s mind, and it was like swimming in heavy water to move through it. Draco breathed and threw the images, breathed and spun them, breathed and built them. He didn’t know what metaphor was best; he just knew that some of the pain was fading. Greg wasn’t normal, but Draco felt the distant little pulses that meant his eyes were fluttering open and he could breathe and blink, and he gratefully jumped back and out of his mind.  
  
He opened his eyes to find Greg staring at him. Draco reached out and patted him clumsily on the shoulder. “You’re going to be all right,” he said.  
  
Greg didn’t respond, but shut his eyes, and began to sigh through something that looked like normal sleep.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Draco shivered a little at the intense joy that flooded him when he heard Potter speak like that. He turned around and gazed up, and Potter gazed back, with a smile that made Draco want to kneel. Since he was kneeling already, that made his head reel.  
  
By the time he could listen again, Potter and Professor Snape were already speaking about what they should do, take their prisoners back to the Ministry or question them right here. Draco was in favor of questioning them here, since the Ministry had been incompetent enough in the first place to let them kidnap Draco and the others, but no one was asking him. He leaned back on the wall of the cellar and relaxed.  
  
“You’re enjoying it, aren’t you?”  
  
Draco glanced up. Pansy stood over him, and there was a complicated expression on her face that lingered on the outside of a scowl.  
  
“Enjoying what?” Draco asked, turning back to Potter and Snape. Snape seemed to have won the argument and was stepping towards the wizards who cowered in fear of his snake. Potter moved forwards to put his hand on the snake’s head, and any attempt it might have made to follow Professor Snape subsided into a shiver.  
  
“Enjoying being part of this bond.” Pansy sat down beside him and looked sideways, as if she needed to figure out what Blaise was doing. Since for now that seemed to be “examining his wrists to see if the rope had left chafing,” Pansy looked at Draco again. “Enjoying having someone protect you.”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. He saw no reason to deny it. “What, aren’t you?”  
  
Pansy sniffed. “We’ll see how well he does as a platform to get me into politics.”  
  
Draco smiled and said nothing. He thought Pansy would probably either change her mind because of the bond or manage to persuade Potter that her politics were harmless. One of them or the other would yield, or they would compromise. The bond no longer felt like slavery to Draco.  
  
He glanced back at Potter just as Potter glanced back at him. Potter’s eyes widened and softened—at what, Draco didn’t know. Maybe just the spectacle Draco and the others presented, sitting like that.  
  
Draco gave him a little wave. Potter still went on looking for a second before he nodded and faced towards the front again.  
  
Draco settled down to half-listening to Pansy’s monologue and half-watching Potter. He wasn’t naïve enough to think everything would be all right after this, but it was all right for the moment, and that might be the best they could get.  
  



	18. Affairs of the Blood

  
Severus pulled roughly out of the mind of the man he’d questioned, and stepped back, grimacing. He had had to use Legilimency with all of them; they wouldn’t respond to ordinary means of interrogation, and Potter wouldn’t allow him to use even threats of torture. The snake swaying in front of them seemed to be as far as he was willing to go.  
  
Severus pressed a hand to his forehead. He could have done this without much trouble, once. But he was exhausted, and the Legilimency took a toll on his mind every time he had to read someone else uncooperative.   
  
“What did you learn?”  
  
“The same thing I learned from the first five,” Severus said, without turning around. He could hear the scrape of scales as Potter either moved his hand along the snake’s back or commanded it to slither aside. He didn’t care which it was, right now. “That they are not Wizengamot members themselves, but related. They are afraid that they might lose their wealth and privileges if you investigated too closely into their connections to the Ministry under the Dark Lord. Some of them are also afraid that you might become a political power later, if you aren’t one now. They wanted you stopped, and they thought the best way to do that was taking us.”  
  
“Surprised they didn’t grab Ron and Hermione, too,” Potter said. He stepped up beside Severus, his face still and his eyes wide as he looked at the malefactors. It reminded Severus of the way he had looked at the ashes of the Dark Lord.  
  
Severus grimaced, rubbed his arm where the bond mark was throbbing slightly, and said, “They are lazy and uncoordinated, and they were desperate. They took us because we were closer and more convenient to them, since we were captive in cells already.” He cast a harsh look at Potter, who had the grace to look embarrassed. “They also know more about Lordship bonds, and give them more credit, than you do. They thought there was no way you could fight back once they had your vassals.”  
  
A sneer worked its way across Potter’s face, and he lifted his boot as if he would prod the nearest wizard in the ribs. Then he pulled it back. “But I did,” he said, and if it was too soft for the ears of the person it was superficially intended for, Severus understood why he said it.  
  
“How did you find us?” Severus asked, changing the subject. “They were clever about blocking the bond so that our emotions could not send you a message, if nothing else.”  
  
For some reason, Potter looked stricken. But he took in a shaky breath and answered, the same way he usually had when Severus called on him in class. “I used the blood of someone related to one of my vassals.”  
  
Severus narrowed his eyes. “Weasley is the likeliest guess,” he said, “but I should not have thought his blood connection to Draco that strong.” He thought that Weasley was also related to the Crabbes through a connection to the Blacks, but that was distant, and he could remember no recent intermarriages with Goyles, Parkinsons, or Princes.  
  
“No,” Potter said, his voice so quiet that Severus only realized it was meant to be words a moment later. “It was—it was Lucius.”  
  
Severus took a step back from him, despite the pulling warmth in his arm, wet and messy like tears, that urged him closer. “There is no way you could have got his blood, unless you have an ally in the Ministry that you did not inform me of.”  
  
Potter shook his head and looked at Severus. _Ah,_ Severus thought with an uninvolved part of himself, _that is why the bond was wet. His eyes look so._ “It turns out that my mother was descended from a Squib who was born into a pure-blood family called the Heltons. They have this blood-ghost thing hanging around that has a grudge against the Malfoys. It already attacked Draco. I convinced—Lucius to take Draco’s place, and give himself to the ghost in exchange for giving me some blood so I could track Draco down.”  
  
For a moment, Severus stood there in the midst of a long fall. Then he shook his head and snapped, “Then you have the most accommodating blood-ghost I ever heard of.”  
  
“He wasn’t fucking accommodating!” Potter stepped towards him, and the snake at his side, the snake _Severus_ had conjured, reared its head back and hissed. Severus rolled his eyes. Of course everyone had to take Potter’s side, including his own conjured animals. “I had to argue and argue with him to get him to take the message to Lucius and come back with Lucius’s blood.”  
  
Severus shook his head. “Blood-ghosts manifest only rarely, Potter. If they complete their task, they’ll fade, but they aren’t all that strong. If they were, they could fulfill more than one task. In this case, it sounds like he’s chosen Draco as his victim, and he must have expended a lot of strength carrying that vial of blood back to you. What makes you think that he would have changed his mind and chosen to slaughter Lucius simply because you asked him to?”  
  
“Because that was the bargain,” Potter said. He was beginning to look confused, not that _that_ was new, Severus thought. He moved his right arm, and Severus noticed for the first time the blood smeared over the shield mark. A crude but effective technique, he thought, and wondered if Potter had had to think before he employed it, or hit on it the first time by sheer luck. “He wouldn’t have brought me the blood if he hadn’t accepted it. He would have just sat there—floated there, I don’t know—and attacked Draco when he came back.”  
  
“Blood-ghosts cannot change their nature,” Severus said.  
  
Potter gasped and stared at him. “He did say that,” he admitted.  
  
“Of course he did,” said Severus. “Blood-ghosts are not usually deceptive to the members of the families they serve.” His mind wandered for a second, distracted by the news that Lily had pure-blood descent, but he folded the thought away to consider for later. The name Helton was not familiar to him, which made it less distracting. “He was trying to warn you. What was his task, specifically?”  
  
“To kill the last member of the family line living,” Potter said. “He said he didn’t do anything to help me against Lucius before because Draco was alive, so killing Lucius wouldn’t do anything to stop the Malfoys, and his center of power is the Ministry holding cells and he can’t move far away from them. But then he said that he could accept Lucius as a substitute for Draco…” Harry’s voice trailed off.  
  
“The same objection would still apply,” Severus said, and didn’t try to hold back his sneer this time, especially because the shield mark had stopped pulsing. “If Draco is alive, he can sire children. No, Mr. Potter. I think it likely that Lucius is still alive, and the blood-ghost told him something different, perhaps simply that you needed the blood to bring Draco back. Once Draco returns to the holding cells, the blood-ghost has his preferred victim in reach, and can slaughter him there.”  
  
“What did you do to my father?”  
  
Severus sighed. Of course Draco would have started listening at the worst point possible in the conversation.   
  
Potter turned around to face Draco, though. “I thought I was sacrificing his life so that you could live and I could find you,” he said. “And you could live after that, because the ghost wouldn’t be hunting you. I’m sorry, but I would do it again.”  
  
Severus slapped his hand over his eyes. Neither Potter nor Draco, of the rapidly widening eyes and harsh breathing, seemed to notice, but he did, and that was the important thing.  
  
 _And sometimes our Lord is stupid._  
  
*  
  
Draco blinked. He had a tingling in his right hand, and in his right arm, and he didn’t know why.  
  
Then he realized that his slapping Potter across the face probably had something to do with it.  
  
He had done it without thinking of the bond, without caring, instinctively. He flexed his fingers now, and swallowed. He didn’t know what punishment the bond would dole out to him, but he didn’t think it would be mild.  
  
Then he realized that Potter was looking at him as though Draco had the right to do that, not even touching his red cheek. And he nodded a little and said, “I made the bargain. I would do the same again. Your father isn’t one of my vassals. You are.”  
  
“But you had to know that they weren’t going to hurt us.” Draco’s throat felt choked, but his voice came out in spite of that, like a river forcing its way around a dam. “They took us and kept us calm, and they bound us, but they didn’t torture us.”  
  
“I had no idea what they intended to do,” Potter said tiredly. Now he reached up and massaged Draco’s handprint, but as if he wanted to go to sleep, rather than as if it hurt. “I only knew they blocked the bond and I couldn’t feel or see you in any normal way. Figuring out how to come to you and how to get a vision of you were accidents. Right now, they weren’t torturing you. But we know they didn’t have much of a plan and just did the first thing that came into their heads.” He looked over at the wizards cowering against the far wall of the cellar. “Torture might have been next, when they realized that I wouldn’t do what they wanted.”  
  
“You would have had to, if they had your vassals.” Draco said. He was still lightheaded at the thought of something happening to his father, but the words spilled out without much effort or prompting. “Of course you would have. That was what they were counting on, wasn’t it?”  
  
Potter narrowed his eyes further. “It’s what they intended. It doesn’t mean that’s what would have happened.”  
  
Draco shook his head violently and wrenched the conversation back on track, which was harder than he thought it would be with the image of his father bleeding to death in the back of his brain. “But they had us, and we were _safe._ You didn’t need to make that stupid bargain. You could have waited.”  
  
“No, I couldn’t.” Potter stood very tall, and his left hand came over to clutch his right arm as though his shield mark was punishing _him_ for some reason. “They could have turned violent at any time, I told you. I needed a way to find you right away.”  
  
Professor Snape delicately cleared his throat. Draco turned towards him, wondering if he could change the world in some way so that his father would still be alive.  
  
“You could indeed have waited,” Professor Snape said. “I could feel the bond in my mind. Their Calming Charms did not have as much effect on the mind of a Legilimens. Perhaps I would have been able to send you a message by touching the bond.”  
  
Potter shrugged. “I had no way of knowing that. I didn’t feel you, you know. None of you. Whatever they did to block the bond, it could be permanent.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth to ask about his father again, but Professor Snape glanced around at the walls and door of the cellar they stood in and shook his head. “Rather, I think, a property of the place they chose to put us in.”  
  
Potter opened his mouth, and no doubt he would ask some other useless and absurd question about the place and what they were supposed to do next. Draco cut in. “You _could have waited,_ ” he said. “You didn’t know Professor Snape might be able to find you, but you _could_ have. You didn’t need to sacrifice my father.”  
  
“I thought at the time I did,” Potter said, looking straight at Draco and so wide-eyed that Draco didn’t think what did come out of his mouth next actually would. “I’m sorry.”  
  
This time, Draco tried to punch him, and he was fully conscious of what he was doing, and he didn’t care about the bond and the shield mark and the way they might punish him. He wanted Potter _dead_ for that kind of remark. If he was sorry and he’d cared about Draco’s father in the first place, he wouldn’t have done this.  
  
Potter avoided the punch, though, and stepped back behind the black snake that Professor Snape had conjured as he spoke. “Stop it, Draco! I did what I thought was best, and it turned out to be the wrong thing to do. Maybe. I could have found you without it. Maybe. But I _didn’t know that at the time._ And I would do anything to keep you safe.”  
  
“Sacrifice our families?” Draco could feel eyes on his back, and knew Pansy and Blaise were watching this, too. Well, good. Maybe they ought to think about it and wonder whether their families were next.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Yourself?” Draco tried to figure out some way past the snake, but it was huge, and he had had a sharp lesson in underestimating them when he was around Nagini. He tried to calm down. Maybe Potter would come in punching distance again if Draco sounded less like he cared.  
  
Potter smiled slightly. “How is that different from what I did in the Forbidden Forest?”  
  
Since Draco still didn’t know the full story of what he’d done in the Forbidden Forest, he ignored that. “Your friends?”  
  
Potter sucked the back of his teeth, making a disgusting sound, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. That’s the tricky one, because I’ve known them so much longer and they’ve been part of my life so much longer.”  
  
Draco decided he didn’t care about looking calm anymore, because Potter had just admitted that he didn’t give a fuck about Draco’s parents. “Fuck you,” he hissed, and had the satisfaction of seeing Potter start. At least he knew Malfoys didn’t often use that kind of language. “I’m not going to sit by and see my parents offered up on an altar every time you feel the need to rescue me.”  
  
“I’ll do whatever I have to to save you.” Potter’s eyes had gone flat and cold, in a way that Draco wouldn’t have thought they could. “And your parents would have done anything to save you. I don’t see how it’s different.” He reached down and roughly massaged the snake’s head, making it hiss at him in a way that sounded irritated. Draco hoped it was. He hoped that the damn snake would turn around and _bite_ Potter. “And you heard Snape—Professor Snape. I don’t think your father is dead. The blood-ghost has decided on you as its victim. It probably helped me so that you would come back.”  
  
“It could still have hurt him.” Draco’s throat seemed to ease a little, but he still found it hard as he envisioned his father sitting in darkness and bleeding from a wound. Of course the Aurors wouldn’t help him treat it. They wouldn’t _care._ “And in the meantime, you act as though it doesn’t matter what he did to himself, as long as you get me back.”  
  
“Get all of you back.” Potter looked around at Pansy and Blaise, hesitating a minute over Greg. Since he was asleep, Draco could understand why, but he didn’t want to understand, and vowed to tell Greg about how Potter had hesitated later when he woke up. Potter looked at Snape last, and nodded at Snape as if he was the one Potter was closest to. “I think it’s the bond affecting me, but I don’t care. I don’t want to feel that frantic and that afraid when I know anyone close to me is in danger. So I came to you.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes. He no longer thought the Lordship bond was such a great thing, such a protective thing, not if it might cost him his family without him even knowing it.  
  
Which made no sense, because shouldn’t the Lordship bond have prevented such thoughts if it didn’t want him to think them?  
  
Draco shook that thought away. “My father asked you for protection,” he said.  
  
“A bloody lot I’ve been able to do so far,” Potter said. He was standing straighter, and for some reason, had exchanged glances with Snape. Draco wanted to know why, but Potter bulled straight on, without giving anyone the chance to ask questions. “And that’s not the same as being a formally bonded vassal. You _know_ it’s not.   
  
“And you heard what Snape said about the blood-ghost and how literal it is. It pretended to agree with me, but it’s after you, not your father. It did this to satisfy _itself,_ so it could have you back, and kill you. So your father’s still alive, and maybe hurt, but not dying. So everything’s all right, and will you _shut up and listen_?”  
  
He’d probably yelled those last words because Draco was shaking his head frantically. Draco couldn’t bring himself to care. The shield mark on his arm still didn’t burn, and that made it easier to say, “But you wouldn’t have cared if he died, and you said that.”  
  
He turned away and sat down, lowering his head. Snape started talking again, but Draco didn’t listen. He buried himself in a private world that had first enveloped him when he stared at the Dark Mark smoldering on his arm and heard the Dark Lord pronounce his task.   
  
_The only ones I can trust are my family. No one else gives a shit about us._  
  
*  
  
Harry stared at Draco’s turned back for a long time. Even knowing that Lucius was alive didn’t seem to have reassured him.  
  
 _Of course not. And you know why._  
  
His shield mark was burning. Harry whipped away and faced Snape, who was in the middle of a long sentence Harry hadn’t heard the beginning of.  
  
“—transport them back to the Ministry. None of the ones I have mind-read know why we are here, in particular. They were told by someone else to come here, and that in this place, they should be safe from pursuit or interference.”  
  
Harry bit his lip. “You think the Ministry will accept that? A bunch of prisoners bringing in a bunch of prisoners?”  
  
Snape shrugged. His face was dark, his eyes glittering and focused on Harry as though Harry really was the center of his existence. “You are the one who chose to play this game by going to the Ministry and through legal channels,” he said quietly. “You are the one who must continue to play it.” He paused delicately. “Unless the rules have changed?”  
  
Harry shook his head. He still had Lucius and Narcissa locked up in the Ministry, and Lewis Boot. Although they weren’t his vassals, they were people he had some kind of interest in.  
  
And these people were connected to the Wizengamot. As much as he hated it, they had to go back to the Ministry to find answers.  
  
“Come, then.” Snape leaned close to Harry. “But I have something to say to you before we leave.”  
  
Harry nodded and went apart with him. He could hear the murmur of voices as Draco spoke to Zabini and Parkinson, and winced. Clear, searing bands of emotion shot across his shield mark, as though someone was burning in the lesson in separate places, so he would never be so stupid again.   
  
“You made a mistake.”  
  
Harry threw up his hands. “I didn’t know there was another way to find you! I did what I thought I had to do.”  
  
“I mean, in making your thoughts transparent to Draco, that his father was just a tool to save him.”  
  
Harry paused and sighed. “Yeah, I think I did.” He wasn’t willing to turn around and say that he would never ask someone else to make a sacrifice for his vassals, though, because that wasn’t true. He would rather anger them than lie to them. He supposed that didn’t make him diplomatic, but he wanted to be an honest Lord first.  
  
“You must learn to hold your tongue,” Snape murmured. He sounded as though he was reading from a book on the duties and training of Lords. For a moment, Harry wished there was one, instead of the mishmash of expectation and tradition that fate had handed him. “You must learn to let some of what your vassals say pass unchallenged and unquestioned. Then do what you must for the good of the whole.”  
  
Harry jerked his head back. He’d made a promise to himself, and here Snape was asking him to break it. “So I should lie to them?”  
  
“By omission,” Snape said, and didn’t look away from him. Harry lowered his eyes, because he didn’t really want Snape reading his mind right now. It was easy to remember he had hated the man, when he talked like this. “They are generally accounted less objectionable than lies of commission.”  
  
“Think those people include Draco?” Harry muttered.  
  
Snape scowled at him; Harry knew it without even raising his eyes. He had learned to read _those_ silences when he was a student at Hogwarts. “It does not matter what one vassal thinks. You must learn what all five of us think.”  
  
Harry did look up at that, because _Snape_ urging him to treat Snape’s own desires as less important than Harry’s own was weird. “But you’re all individuals. How can I treat you just like one of a group? Parkinson might want something you hate, and Draco might want something I can’t give him but I can’t just ignore, and Zabini wants to leave altogether.”  
  
Snape gave him another sharp look. “You will have to learn how to balance your desire to give all of us free will and what the Lordship binds you to. It is called being an adult.”  
  
Harry scowled. So Snape had no secret key, and it was the same thing everyone had been telling him all along.  
  
“Let’s get this bunch to the Ministry,” he said, nodding to the wizards slumped along the wall and still staring in fear at the snake. “We can figure out what to do once we get there.”  
  
 _I’m always going to be better with direct action than with words._  
  
*  
  
Blaise ducked his head. Let Pansy and Malfoy think he was nodding in response to their conversation, which in fact had gone so fast and so angrily that he couldn’t keep up with most of the words.  
  
In reality, he was watching Potter, and he didn’t want his _Lord_ to see his expression. He would have worried about Potter feeling his emotions through the bond, but there was no sign of that, and Blaise had been feeling them at least since Potter got here.  
  
There was dissension among them, now. Pansy might still follow Potter, Snape might think it was the best solution, and Goyle didn’t count, but Malfoy was turning away. Anyone who tried to hurt his family was someone he might fear, but never count as an ally. Blaise knew that from the hints about the Dark Lord he’d dropped over the last year.  
  
That meant _Blaise_ had an ally, and with that, he might break free of Potter, or even bring him down.  
  
Blaise had to smile. _Thanks for the free gift, Potter._


	19. Bad Mistakes

  
“Potter!”  
  
Harry would have to become used to people shrieking that at him, he supposed. This time, it was at least someone from the Ministry, not one of his vassals. Harry reckoned that anyone—he didn’t know from his robes if the man was an Auror or a Hit Wizard or someone to do with the Wizengamot or another department altogether—would shriek when they noticed a prisoner marching up to the lifts with another bunch of prisoners and tied people floating behind them.  
  
The man started to raise his wand, but Harry got in his way with the one he had stolen from the captor he’d dueled, and the man stopped. Harry smiled. He didn’t know if it was a nice smile, but it made the Ministry man give him a look of fearful respect, and at the moment, that was more important.  
  
“Listen,” Harry said. “These people took my vassals.” He nodded to the tied Wizengamot flunkies. “They planned to hold them hostage and force me to cooperate with them, politically. I went to them instead, freed my vassals, and took _them_ hostage instead. I’m prepared to cooperate with the Ministry, but I want Auror Stone and Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley to conduct the negotiations. I don’t trust anyone else right now.”  
  
The Ministry man backed up a step, and then bowed. He had large black eyebrows that overshadowed his face, but his voice was much more respectful as he said, “Of course, Lord Potter.” Harry didn’t let himself grimace at the title, partially because he knew it would be a bad idea, but more because he could feel Snape watching him. “My name is Hans Checkerworth. I work for the Wizengamot as a clerk. I hope that’s acceptable.”  
  
“It is,” Harry said shortly, “as long as you go get the people I talked about.”  
  
Another bow, and then Checkerworth scurried away to the lifts. Harry turned and stared at the crowd that had gathered around them. There were a few Aurors in it, but a lot more ordinary Ministry people, like the ones that he and Ron had impersonated when they broke into the Ministry.   
  
“What are you looking at?” Harry asked them, and they broke away, murmuring, and made for the lifts or the fireplaces or wherever they’d been going. Harry sighed and raked a hand down his face.  
  
Snape had done his best with Legilimency, but it was obvious that none of the wizards who had taken Harry’s Slytherins knew who owned the cellar where they’d been. Only that it would block the Lordship bond to be there, and it was _someone’s_ good idea. And now they would have to deal with the Ministry, which would probably be more upset about Harry escaping than a potential hostage situation. And to make it worse, the wizard Harry had dueled, and most of the rest, were related to the Wizengamot somehow.  
  
It was a mess.  
  
“You’ve made a mistake.”  
  
That was Draco. Of course it was. Harry stared at the far wall and asked, “And what is that?”  
  
Draco seized his arm and turned him around. Harry went, noting with annoyance that Draco was a little taller than he was, at least standing on this level. And Harry’s shield mark burned and throbbed with Draco’s emotions. The effect had begun to come back even when they were still in that cellar, since Harry was close to his vassals again, but it hadn’t been as strong there as it was here.  
  
“Deciding that you could give up my father in exchange for me,” Draco hissed. “I’m not going to forget that you were willing to kill him.”  
  
Harry looked at him and said the first thing that came into his mind. He was so _tired._ “And you don’t think that he would have sacrificed himself for you? Would you be upset if he came to rescue you and died fighting?”  
  
Draco recoiled. “Of _course._ Maybe you don’t understand it since you don’t have parents, Potter, but some of us actually _value_ our families!”  
  
Harry hissed again and turned away. He had asked the question in the wrong way. Of course he had. As Draco would say, it was inevitable. He had no connection to his vassals outside the bond and maybe the fact that Snape was willing to work with Harry and soothe things along a little bit. But he was responsible for them legally and morally, and maybe financially as well.  
  
He stood there in what seemed like freezing silence for a long time. At least Draco didn’t try to touch him again, but he hovered nearby, and Harry could feel his gaze digging into the side of Harry’s face, like probing needles of ice. Harry did his best to ignore it. It didn’t really work.  
  
“Lord Potter.”  
  
That was Auror Stone, striding towards them like an animated boulder, but at the moment, Harry couldn’t think of one that was more welcome. His friends weren’t here yet, but Stone would at least listen to his story. He held up his arm, and saw Stone’s eyes focus on the traces of blood that clung to the shield mark, before moving to the bound and floating wizards behind him.  
  
“They were people who kidnapped my vassals and took them to a cellar,” Harry said simply. “One that blocked the Lordship bond. Most of them are related to the Wizengamot members. I don’t know if I can get them in trouble, but I formally _request_ that they at least be detained for a while.” He glanced over his shoulder, and the scowls on the faces he could see clearly made him speak again. “I don’t want political power, you bastards. I just want a normal life. You’re part of the reason I probably won’t be able to have one.”  
  
“Lord Potter.” Stone’s voice didn’t sound more formal than usual, but it did sound more commanding. Harry turned his head back. She extended her hand. “I need the wand that you took, please.”  
  
“ _My_ wand!” the wizard Harry had dueled called out.  
  
Stone turned her chill gaze on him, and the man abruptly flinched and tried to hide behind several others, which was kind of impossible when they were floating all in a line like that. Stone only nodded. “I’ll remember that you said that, sir,” she said, and again turned back and faced Harry in expectant silence.  
  
Harry held the wand over her hand. “I want your word that you’ll see these wizards tried for what they did,” he said.  
  
Snape rustled forwards and bent down near Harry, ignoring the way Stone tensed at him. “And moved to a different place,” Snape said, voice soft but harsh. “The holding cells are not safe for us, not if these wizards, who were not even particularly well-organized, could break in and just take us out of them.” His eyes flickered to Draco.  
  
Harry, not missing the message about the blood-ghost, turned to Stone. “Yes. Can you do that? Is there any other place that can hold us?”  
  
Stone hesitated. Then she said, “The only other official place that Ministry prisoners can be held is Azkaban, and you led me to believe that was detrimental, for several reasons.”  
  
“Of _course_ it is,” Harry said, forcefully. “What I mean is, will you take my formal word not to rebel or escape again, unless my vassals are in danger, and let us go somewhere else?’  
  
“I would take it,” Stone said, lifting her head to look him in the eyes. “It does not mean that the rest of the Ministry would.”  
  
Harry grimaced. He only had one choice that he could see. Maybe someone else could come up with something else. Someone who wasn’t tired and battered and hated by half the wizarding world and two of his own vassals.  
  
“What about an Unbreakable Vow?” he asked.  
  
“Or a Lord’s Oath.”  
  
Harry blinked and turned his head. Parkinson had spoken. She returned his look primly, her hands folded in front of her. She looked enough like Hermione when she got into a certain mood that Harry relaxed in spite of himself and asked her, “What’s a Lord’s Oath?”  
  
“Something I was trying to remember earlier and couldn’t,” Parkinson said. She looked between Harry and Stone as though waiting for one of them to stop her, but when neither did, she shrugged and continued speaking. “But I had a lot of time to think in the cell, before they came and took us. A Lord can swear an oath that’s on their mark, basically, or whatever other thing they’ve done to claim their vassals. If they break it, the mark starts burning them, and their Lordship weakens. They wouldn’t be able to sense their vassals as well, and the vassals would have more freedom from them.”  
  
“I’ll do it,” Harry said instantly.  
  
“The quickness of your response and your feelings about the bond do not let lead me to the feeling that you would keep your word, Lord Potter,” said Stone quietly.  
  
Harry winced. _Right_. “Listen,” he said, and faced her again. “I don’t want to break it. I mean—I want my vassals free from this, but with no negative consequences to anyone. And this sounds like it would have negative consequences to me, at least.”  
  
“So could breaking out of your cell and going after them the way you did,” Stone said.  
  
Harry nodded. “I know. But I would still rather give you this Lord’s Oath and wait for my friends to find some way to get me free of the bond than break it. I told you, with the exception that someone takes my vassals again. Then I have to able to leave the place where I’d be staying and go after them.”  
  
Stone stood there and looked into his eyes so intently that Harry winced a little. But her face lived up to her name, and Harry couldn’t tell whether she would agree until she inclined her head and said, “I presume that you have a property in mind that could function as a place for you to stay?”  
  
Harry nodded. “Sirius Black made me his heir. I have a house that used to belong to the Blacks. Would that do?”  
  
“How secure is it?”  
  
“In the middle of Muggle London,” Harry said, and saw the way Stone looked at his vassals. Yes, that probably made sense to her, he thought. With the exception of Snape and maybe Zabini, he doubted that most of the others would know how to walk around in Muggle London or run away very well. “It has protections on it because it used to be the headquarters for Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix. Most people wouldn’t be able to break in.”  
  
“I would have said the same thing about the Ministry holding cells,” Stone said, switching her stare back to him.  
  
“Yes, but we neglected to think about how much the Wizengamot would hate me for disrupting their lives,” Harry said. “So I think it’s best if we stay in some place that’s out of their direct control.” He held his hand up, because Stone’s forehead had started to furrow. “I know that you’re probably worried about them breaking out, too, but that’s what my word is for. I’m going to take care of them and make sure that they don’t run away, either.”  
  
 _Oh, really?_ Harry didn’t hear the words in his head, but he might as well have, because they, or words very like them, were burning up his mind from Zabini’s direction.  
  
Did _Zabini_ not realize that Harry could feel what he was feeling now, and had for a while even in the cellar? Well, it didn’t matter. Harry had dealt with his rebellion once before, and now he would deal with it again. And he would deal with Draco hating him, and Snape resenting him, and Goyle when he woke up, and Parkinson…  
  
Parkinson was coming forwards, looking back and forth between him and Stone. “I know the ceremony of the Lord’s Oath,” she offered quietly. “I can help you perform it.”  
  
“There’s a ceremony?” Harry asked. But of course there was. There was _always_ a fucking ceremony, sometimes something that he did without meaning to, like coming up with the bond and the shield mark in the first place.  
  
Parkinson smiled at him as if hearing his thoughts. “Yes. Exactly. That means that you’re bound to the mark by a vow to someone else. Otherwise, the mark only constitutes a vow between you and your vassals.”  
  
“It would have been useful if you could have remembered this earlier,” Harry muttered. “Hermione was searching through all these books for material on the Lordship bond, and she couldn’t come up with anything like this.”  
  
“Shock and fear and the ending of a war gave me other things to think about, so sorry,” Parkinson snapped back, winding a curl of hair around her finger. “But I remember now. And I don’t know how useful it would be in the long term, but it can be useful _now_.”  
  
Harry turned back to Stone. “Would you accept the Lord’s Oath from me?”  
  
“I am only one Auror,” Stone said. “Not even the one with the most seniority in the Department.”  
  
Harry smiled. “But you told me a bunch of other Aurors had been compromised by serving Voldemort and you were still straightening things out and even relying on trainees. So I think you’re higher up now than you are most of the time.”  
  
“And one person can accept the Lord’s Oath,” Parkinson added, her voice strong and confident when Harry looked at her. “As long as it’s done in the right way, then the consequences for breaking the vow will be the same for the Lord. And it doesn’t matter who he swore to, or why.”  
  
Stone considered this for only a few seconds before she turned to Parkinson. “I have heard of this ceremony, but not been through it. What do you think we need to do?” She was already drawing her wand.  
  
Parkinson hesitated, as though she was surprised to have so many people relying on her all at once. Harry held her eyes and smiled as encouragingly as he could. He didn’t know if he could send support to her through the bond and the mark, but there was always this old-fashioned way.  
  
*  
  
 _You’ve read all about it. You would have mentioned it before now if you’d been with Potter, or had more time to concentrate._  
  
Pansy knew that backing down would probably make Potter distrust her more than ever, and she didn’t want that to happen. Ultimately, he would be her shadow and her support in her political decisions. She had to have a basic level of trust from him.  
  
And that meant showing more confidence where she was faltering. She knew the truth better than Blaise and Draco, who planned and plotted and raged and thought someone had to attend to them. She knew she was weak right now, but she would grow.  
  
One way of growing was being able to provide services to people that they needed. To Potter, she said, “Kneel.”  
  
He did it immediately, never taking his eyes off her. Pansy folded her arms so that her right one wouldn’t tremble. It was _tingling,_ and she didn’t know whether that was a positive thing or not, but she didn’t want it to throw her off.  
  
“Now you,” she said to Stone. “Kneel opposite him.”  
  
Stone reminded Pansy of her mother, the way she stared, but she did it. Pansy walked behind her. “Now close your eyes, my lord,” she told Potter. The title felt less uncomfortable on her lips when she reminded herself that it was part of a political objective. “Blindness shows trust. Voluntary blindness, at least. Now, Auror Stone, rest your wand on his hands , and then put your hands on either side of his head. Clasp your hands in front of you, my lord. No, as if you were holding the shaft of a broom. One atop the other.”  
  
The ritual was coming back the more she thought about it. It was a simple ceremony, really. Not one she’d sought to memorize, but one that was close enough to others she’d had to memorize that it was easy to keep in mind and realize what must come next.  
  
“What do we do now?”  
  
Pansy started. Stone was impatient even if Potter wasn’t and the mark on her arm had settled down to a steady humming, it seemed. Pansy concealed a sigh. “You keep your hands in place and he keeps his in place, and you swear the vow, my lord. Make sure that you say what you’re going to do and where we’re going to stay and the one exception you mentioned before. And you have to end it by saying that you swear on your magic and your Lordship.”  
  
“That seems simple enough,” Potter muttered.  
  
“Do I get no say in this vow?” Stone’s voice was patient, but heavy.  
  
Pansy shook her head, then realized that Stone was being absolutely obedient and wouldn’t look away from Potter, so she hadn’t seen what Pansy had done. Pansy sighed and said, “No. You’re the one who receives the Lord’s Oath. If there’s something unacceptable in what he proposed, you have to say it, now, before he makes the vow.”  
  
Stone just kept kneeling there, silent. Pansy nodded and turned to Potter, who kept his eyes closed. “All right. Go ahead and make it now, my lord.”  
  
“I promise that my vassals and I will stay in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and we won’t leave it unless the Ministry brings us to _legal_ trial or someone kidnaps my vassals, or the house is in danger of being destroyed,” Potter said. “I swear it on my magic and my Lordship.”  
  
The flare of the vow around him and Stone took place much faster than the flames of an Unbreakable Vow did, which Pansy had only seen once. This was a brilliant white infinity symbol, flaring like magnesium dropped in water, and it wove around both Potter and Stone, with one of them in each of its loops. It faded while Pansy was still trying to determine if it was connected to their hands, or to the mark on Potter’s arm or not.  
  
“Excellent,” Stone said, a little breathily, opening her eyes. “I trust that you will do your best to keep this vow, Lord Potter.”  
  
“I would have kept the last one,” Potter said breathlessly, in turn, opening his eyes, “if a bunch of idiots hadn’t come and kidnapped my vassals.”  
  
Stone eyed him as though she doubted the truth of that, but finally nodded and stood up. “Good. Then you and your vassals can leave for Grimmauld Place as soon as your friends come to escort you, correct? Checkerworth told me that he had to find them as well as me.”  
  
“Harry!”  
  
Granger and Weasley were coming. Pansy faded back to stand behind Potter. She didn’t get along well with either one of them, and given the expressions on their faces, they were worried about Potter and Pansy didn’t want to get in their way.  
  
Then Draco stepped forwards. Pansy tried to catch his arm. Going to the Black house, no matter how run-down, had to be better than staying in the holding cells, and if Professor Snape was right about a ghost trying to kill Draco here, they would be safer there, too.  
  
“What about my parents, Potter?” Draco asked loudly, avoiding Pansy’s hand. “They were supposed to be protected. Aren’t you going to petition for them to be taken out, too, and follow us? You _have_ to.”  
  
Potter stood up and turned to him with eyes that had gone soft with sorrow. Pansy would have liked to smack him on the forehead, right over the lightning bolt scar. You couldn’t be soft with Draco. He mistook it for stupidity. The only professor he had really respected, other than Snape, had been McGonagall, because she had never showed him that kind of soppiness that the others tended to.  
  
“I made the vow already,” Potter said. “They’re not my vassals. They can’t come with us.”  
  
Draco nodded, and then went on nodding when he should have stopped, as though his head had become loose. Again Pansy tried to get to him, and again he avoided her without looking. “Then your word means nothing. When you said they would have protection, and they would receive a fair trial?”  
  
Potter sighed and turned to Stone. “Would you check on Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Malfoy, Auror Stone? I used some of Mr. Malfoy’s blood to get to my vassals this time, because I didn’t know any other way. He may be wounded. And please step up the guard on them. Someone might try for them next.”  
  
Stone’s eyebrows went up in a way that made Pansy certain she would have liked to hear the story of how Potter had got Mr. Malfoy’s blood, but she bobbed her head. “Yes, Lord Potter. I had too much trust in the faithfulness of Aurors before this. I am going to find out who let the people who kidnapped you pass. And we’ll interrogate those who did, be certain.” Her eyes wandered to the people floating bound behind Potter.  
  
“I am related to the Greengrasses!” yelled a tall witch who Pansy had seen when they came to her holding cell to take her. “You can’t do this!”  
  
“Really?” Auror Stone asked mildly. “Well, you can’t kidnap people without consequences, either. Let’s give you the chance to tell your stories, and we’ll see if you have a good excuse for _that_.”  
  
“And my parents?” Draco demanded, looking at both Potter and Auror Stone as if he wasn’t sure which one would provide the better target for him.  
  
“I’ll check on them,” Auror Stone said calmly. “I can heal some wounds. I’ll take care of Mr. Malfoy’s wounds myself, if he has them, and any that Mrs. Malfoy has. And you have my word as an Auror to step up the guard on them. No one’s ready to go to trial yet. It’ll take longer.”  
  
“And that’s _all_?” Draco spun to Potter. “That’s all I get?”  
  
“That’s all.” Potter’s eyes were a million years old. “I’m doing the most I can by protecting you, and the vow wouldn’t apply to people who aren’t vassals.”  
  
“God, Harry, let’s get you to Grimmauld Place,” Weasley muttered. Granger threw her arms around Potter briefly, then started making a little speech that Pansy didn’t pay attention to. It wasn’t like she would be allowed to Apparate on her own anyway.  
  
She watched Draco and Blaise, instead. Draco was fuming, and the harder he did it, the longer Blaise smiled.  
  
Pansy didn’t really like the Lordship and what it made her do, either. She would get rid of it if there was a chance. But she distrusted the way that Draco and Blaise would go about getting rid of it. Draco’s loyalty to his family was blind; he would make any promises, and sod anyone who got in the way.  
  
And Blaise probably thought all he had to do was run away, and that would weaken the Lordship bond.  
  
 _Well, I’ll do what I can to foil you._  
  
As Pansy turned back to Potter and Granger, she saw Professor Snape watching her. She didn’t think it was his imagination, although the move was subtle to escape Draco’s and Blaise’s eyes, when he inclined his head to her.  
  
 _At least I’ll have help._


	20. Grimmauld Place

  
“Hello?”  
  
Harry called into the depths of the dusty house, and ended up grimacing and shaking his head. Kreacher wasn’t here, he thought. Probably still at Hogwarts.  
  
His shield mark burned, briefly, and then he heard Parkinson’s disgusted shriek behind him as she stepped into a cobweb. Or maybe just a pile of dust, Harry discovered, as he turned around. The cobweb seemed to have been on her _face,_ from the way she was pawing at it.  
  
“My house-elf isn’t here,” Harry said. “I suppose that means we have to do what we can to make the house livable.” He hesitated and glanced at Snape. He knew that Snape had seized a wand from the wizards they’d fought, too, and although Harry had given the one he’d taken back to Auror Stone, he hadn’t heard Snape say anything.  
  
Snape inclined his head, but said nothing now, either. Harry nodded once and turned around, walking to the kitchen. He ignored the shrieking from Walburga’s portrait, but heard it cut off when Draco said something.  
  
 _Well, good. Maybe now that she’s got a cousin here, she’ll stop screaming at us all the time._ And most of them, minus him, weren’t blood traitors anyway. Unless Snape counted.  
  
Harry sighed and slapped his own forehead to try and cure his rambling thoughts. He knew what part of the problem was. He was bloody _tired,_ that was what it was. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a year. That sounded like a brilliant idea, actually, the more he considered it. When he woke up, all of the trials would be done, one way or the other.  
  
The shield mark gave a chiding little sting, and Harry groaned and nodded again. No, he couldn’t lie back and just give in like that. He was financially and legally responsible for his Slytherins, at least for some of what they would suffer, and he had to be there.  
  
“Potter?”  
  
That was Snape, slipping into the kitchen. Harry concentrated a little, and deduced that Draco was still in the front hall, talking to Walburga’s portrait. Parkinson and Zabini had spread out, exploring rooms on the first floor. Goyle, whom their Auror escort had carried here, was asleep on the couch.   
  
“I am surprised that you did not ask your friends to stay.” Snape leaned against the table and folded his arms.  
  
“I wanted to,” Harry said frankly. And Ron and Hermione had wanted to stay, too. But the Aurors who’d brought them had explained that the Lord’s Oath had no provision for them, and from the insults that had _already_ started flying between Ron and Draco, Harry could think of no excuse good enough for them to stay. “In the end, though, it was more trouble than it was worth.”  
  
Snape went on watching him. Harry watched him back. He was no longer so tired that it felt as if every thought was veering off into its own separate path, but it was true that he still felt as though his head was reeling and he would fall off the edge of the world any second. At least he thought he could concentrate on what Snape wanted from him.  
  
 _Whatever that is._  
  
“You know that Draco will most likely try to do something stupid soon,” Snape said quietly. “And Zabini, as well.”  
  
Harry made a swishing motion with one hand. He didn’t really know what he meant it to mean, and from the sharp glare Snape gave him, _he_ didn’t, either. Harry dropped his arm back to his side and shook his head. “I know. In Draco’s case, I can understand. He thinks that I did something wrong by not letting him see his parents, and asking his father to make that sacrifice. But I don’t understand Zabini. He got _hurt,_ once. Does he think that he can break free again?”  
  
Snape started to open his mouth, but sharply turned his head to the side. Harry felt through the bond, but as far as he could tell, none of his vassals was in danger.  
  
Then he heard the thunderous knocking on the front door.  
  
Harry rolled his eyes and stood abruptly. _Great, more shit to deal with. I hate this shit. Why does someone always come along and interrupt just as I’m about to get some fucking rest?_  
  
He didn’t swear aloud, but it was satisfying to repeat the words in his head. He nodded to Snape. “Stay behind me,” he said, and moved towards the door.  
  
“Who is the one who has a wand?” Snape hissed, and the shield mark on Harry’s arm snapped and stung at him. Harry rolled his eyes again and kept walking.  
  
“If they’ve come to kidnap someone again, you can defend me,” he said, noting that Parkinson was peering back around the corner as Harry went to the door. “But they might at least hesitate when they see me, whereas they won’t give a shit about you.”  
  
The wordless growl Snape gave was satisfying, too, in its own way—far more so than who Harry found when he opened the door. For a second, he stared, and then he smoothed his face into its most neutral lines and gave a little bow.  
  
“Healer Kislik,” he said, using one foot to nudge Snape hard on the ankle. “I’m afraid that I’m going to need an oath from you that you won’t try to hurt my vassals or break the bond before I let you come in.”  
  
*  
  
Severus studied the woman on the doorstep with hooded eyes. She wore plain robes now, without the green or the symbol of crossed bone and wand that had marked her as a Healer at Hogwarts. She had small bells braided into her hair as well, made of copper and bronze, which tinkled when she turned her head. Severus did not know their significance. He wondered if Potter had noticed them.  
  
 _Of course not,_ he decided when he looked down. Potter was close to dead on his feet, having performed at least three powerful magical feats that day—whatever he had done with Lucius’s blood to come and rescue them in the cellar, the contest with the Wizengamot’s flunkies, and the Lord’s Oath he had made to Stone. Now was not the time for him to be speaking to someone like this Healer, who had bewildered him once.  
  
“You are asking me to betray other oaths I have made, oaths that mean a great deal to me.” Kislik’s voice was low and precise, and she watched Potter, considering every moment of weakness and what it meant. “I can deliver the message I have for you from the doorstep, if you will not let me in.”  
  
Potter shook his head and stood up a little straighter. “I can’t. You need to tell me what you came for, and that’ll be it.”  
  
Kislik bent towards Potter, the bells rattling in her hair. Severus tightened his hand on his stolen wand. A conquered wand never worked as well for the conqueror as the one that had chosen him, but they usually yielded, and this one was warm and congenial under his touch.  
  
“We will never stop,” Kislik whispered. “What you have done is slavery. What you _will_ do is slavery. Carving paths in their mind with the Lordship bond and binding them closer to you was never anything but slavery. We will destroy you, if we have to, so that you cannot bond or bind any more of them.”  
  
Potter went on blinking at the Healer as if she had stepped out of a dream.  
  
Then he shut the door in her face.  
  
Severus released the wand and rubbed his right arm, only then aware that the shield mark had tightened as though the skin there was scarred. It relaxed as he touched it, and Potter sighed and leaned his forehead against the door.  
  
“Stupid woman,” he muttered.  
  
Severus shook his head slightly. He was not _entirely_ pleased that he had a Lord with such a simple vocabulary, but he had to remind himself that this was the same young man who had stood in front of the Wizengamot—less than a day ago, yes—and challenged them with arguments they couldn’t answer. Potter possessed the capacity and the talent to do what was needed. He simply did not always have the resources.  
  
The Healer knocked again. Potter raised his head, frowning, and glanced around as though he had no idea what to do. Then his face brightened, and he crossed the hallway to the wall, where a small, flat patch shimmered on the paper. Severus had to smirk as he remembered what it was. During the Order’s tenure in Grimmauld Place, they had established this as a crossing place of the wards, and one could tighten them or relax them at will by pressing on it.  
  
Potter pressed on it now, and there was the sound of someone staggering back from the door as the wards came into effect and pushed her off the stoop. Potter snorted and folded his arms. “Should have thought of that right after the Aurors left,” he muttered.  
  
“You were too tired to think of it,” Severus said, only hearing how low his voice had gone when it emerged.  
  
Potter turned to stare at him in surprise. “Since when have _you_ been the one to make excuses for me?” he demanded.  
  
“Since I saw how directly your poor performance is tied to your weariness.” Severus gripped the boy’s arm when he spluttered and pressed his fingers, warningly, into the shield mark. “I think that you need to go to _bed,_ Potter. It needs to be in a room a distance from the others, where no one will disturb you.”  
  
Potter shrugged wearily. “I can’t cast Silencing Charms since I don’t have a wand.”  
  
“I will cast them,” Severus said, and dragged him towards the nearest staircase.  
  
*  
  
Draco had stopped talking with his cousin—or was she an aunt?—in the portrait when the knock came, to see how Potter would deal with it. To his disappointment, it wasn’t much of a challenge for him. If he had admitted the Healer to the house, the way Draco thought he would with his guilt and fear preying on him, then Draco might have been able to watch something amusing, but he’d shut her out.  
  
And now Professor Snape was bending over _Potter,_ as though _Potter_ was the one who deserved his anxiety and his kindness. Well, the gruff kindness that Snape sometimes displayed as Head of Slytherin House, anyway. Draco, and all the other Slytherins, knew better than to expect Snape to act like a parent.  
  
But even the hold he used on Potter’s arm to drag him towards the staircase wasn’t as rough as it could have been.  
  
Draco frowned. He had the impression that Professor Snape had more freedom under the bond than any of the rest of them; at least, Potter seemed to talk to him and ask his permission more to do things instead of just commanding him the way he did everyone else. What would happen if Professor Snape gave in to Potter’s idiocy and started acting like a servant towards him? Draco would lose the opportunity to watch some of the challenges that could entertain him, and if Potter wasn’t worn down from fighting Professor Snape, he might never weaken the hold that the bond had over Draco.  
  
“Malfoy.”  
  
That was Blaise’s voice, coming from the doorway of what looked like a drawing room when Draco turned around. He walked towards it, ignoring, for the moment, the burn of resentment in his stomach. He _should_ know exactly what this house looked like, the rooms in it and how many of them there were and what treasures they contained. This house _should_ have come to him, as his inheritance, instead of going to bloody _Potter_. He should have been able to do _what he wanted_.   
  
His father shouldn’t have had to sacrifice himself.  
  
The shield mark stung a little. Draco rubbed it and ducked in beside Blaise.  
  
Yes, it was a drawing room, although with the paper hanging in strips on the wall and something black, mold or worse, along the floorboards. Draco wrinkled his nose and turned to Blaise. Blaise was sitting casually in the middle of a dark-flowered couch that was either cleaner than it looked or—well, it had to be cleaner than it looked, that was all.  
  
“What do you want?” Draco demanded.  
  
“Come.” Blaise patted the spot beside him and gave him a smile that Draco wasn’t stupid enough to trust. “Sit.”  
  
Draco dragged his way slowly towards Blaise, and ended up sitting down after deciding that, since Professor Snape had a wand, he could just perform a Cleaning Charm on Draco’s robes tomorrow. “What do you want?” he repeated, leaning forwards with his hands clasped in front of him. “Don’t tell me you have some great master plan to escape Potter again. You know the last time didn’t work.”  
  
Blaise twitched, but his eyes grew deeper and darker, and he leaned forwards with one hand pressed down on the couch as if crushing his temper. “I have come up with a plan. I’m not going to flee on my own, though. You’re right, that didn’t work.” He waited, but Draco had nothing to say without more of a clue, so Blaise continued. “But I was thinking, if _two_ of us rebelled at once…”  
  
Draco stirred in interest despite himself. “What makes you think I have any interest in rebelling against him?”  
  
Blaise looked quietly at him, and then continued when he seemed to have decided that silence wasn’t working again. “Your face. Your eyes. Your words about your father. You know that Potter should _pay_ for what he did to your father.”  
  
“Don’t pretend that you care about my family, Zabini.” With an effort, Draco kept his eyes bored, his lounging back on the chair smooth and slumped instead of tightly controlled. “You don’t give a shit about anyone except yourself.”  
  
“But in a case where we could help each other, of course I have to care about my allies,” Blaise said in a small, shocked voice, holding his hands up. “My mother taught me that. It’s only good politics.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes again, but he had to admit that they might stand more of a chance together than apart. Potter only had five vassals. If two of them rebelled against him, that was almost half. And Pansy had no reason to stand in their way, as long as they could present her with proof that the bond would weaken. Then she could go away and do the precious political work that mattered to her so much.  
  
Maybe they could even convince Greg to join them, if he ever woke up.  
  
But Draco could think of one problem, and he moved his chin in the direction of the staircase it had walked up. “What about Professor Snape?”  
  
“What about him?” Blaise had tensed. Draco knew he had. No one else might have noticed, but he hadn’t shared rooms with the boy for seven years without knowing him.  
  
“He’s protecting Potter,” Draco said, letting his disgust fill his voice. He had thought Professor Snape would stand with them if anyone did. He might not have Draco’s family reasons or Blaise’s insane desire for freedom, but he couldn’t stand Potter. For some reason, though, he seemed to have decided that coddling the idiot was the best way to advance himself in the bond. So much for all his words about wanting to defend his Slytherin students. “You think he’s going to stand aside if we try to do something?”  
  
“No.” Blaise shivered and rubbed the shield mark on his right arm. “But we can come up with something to get him out of the way.”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes and stood. “You do that.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Blaise asked sharply, tilting his head back to scowl at Draco. “If we’re allies, we have to do things together.”  
  
“Yes, but you rebelled once before and failed,” Draco said. “I don’t want my arm almost burned off by the magic of the bond, thank you.”  
  
Blaise’s eyes flashed once, and his hand moved towards his right arm before he dropped it back to his side. “That only happened because I tried to kill him,” he said. “I know better than that now. We won’t confront him directly.”  
  
“But we might have to confront _Professor Snape_ directly,” Draco pointed out. “So. Impress me. Come up with a plan that can take Professor Snape out. You don’t have to do it by yourself, but you have to show me that you can think about more than running away. When you have something, we’ll put it into motion, and I’ll come up with a plan to confront Potter. One thing’s for certain, he trusts me more than he’ll ever trust you. That’s fair, isn’t it?”  
  
Blaise’s dark face flushed, and he clenched his hands into his lap for a second. But then he nodded. “Fair’s fair,” he said, ducking his head.  
  
“Good,” Draco said, and left the drawing room to make his way to the first floor and choose a bedroom of his own. He didn’t think he needed to worry about it being too near Potter’s. The charms and wards that would be around Potter’s door, because Snape was the only one of them who had a wand, would warn him away, and he would pick one at least several doors down.  
  
He didn’t want to be anywhere near the man who had made him and his parents a promise of safety and then betrayed them so effectively.  
  
*  
  
 _It’s going to be up to me to do something about this, isn’t it?_  
  
Pansy lay back on the bed in the room she had chosen as her own, and sighed. At least it was relatively free of dust and cobwebs, even if the walls still had smells that her mother would never have allowed in the house and Pansy thought she had caught a glimpse of a doxy giggling behind a curtain before it darted out of the way.  
  
Besides, she had other things to think about than the cleanliness of her surroundings. Like, the stupid way Blaise and Draco were handling themselves.  
  
Pansy groaned and closed her eyes. She didn’t _want_ to think about them. She didn’t want to do anything but lie here and brood.  
  
But Professor Snape had given no sign that he’d overheard their conversation, which left Pansy as the only witness. She’d had to move away smartly when Draco stood up from the couch, but otherwise, they’d talked freely, and Pansy didn’t think either one of the fools knew she’d been there.  
  
That infuriated her as much as anything else. They hadn’t always been intelligent in the past—witness the utter mess Draco had made of his own sixth year—but they were _supposed_ to be. They always went around bragging that they were better than other people, and most of the people in Slytherin House did the same thing. Pansy didn’t think arrogance was a bad character trait, but you had to be able to back up your claims, and you had to understand when circumstances changed. If it was better to act _right now_ , then you had to do it and not whine about immediate action being for Gryffindors. If it was better to stand down and wait for another time to act, then you also had to grasp that.  
  
Blaise wanted his freedom so badly that he didn’t care who heard him, or overheard him. And Draco hadn’t listened to Professor Snape’s assurances that his father was probably fine. He had decided that Potter had no right to ask someone else to make sacrifices to save his vassals, even though Draco knew more about the Lordship bonds than Potter did and should have anticipated everything that had happened so far. They would do something stupid that would further tighten the restrictions on all of them, and might prevent Pansy from ever being comfortable with the bond.  
  
Because if Potter felt that he had to ride herd on them, he would do it on _all_ of them. That was his Gryffindor notion of fairness.  
  
Pansy grimaced and sat up. All right, so she had decided in her righteous anger that Draco and Blaise were wrong and something needed to be done about them. The question was, what should it be?  
  
Professor Snape was busy guarding Potter right now. Potter was exhausted. Greg was still out of the equation. No one else was in the house. Pansy was on her own, without even a wand to protect her.  
  
Then she bit her lip thoughtfully. Without a wand, but she thought she’d seen…  
  
She rummaged in the drawer of the table beside the bed, and finally found a stack of relatively clean parchment and a quill. When she picked up the inkwell locked in the table, gingerly, she ended up exhaling hard in relief. It still had liquid ink in it. It was either charmed or protected by house-elf magic.  
  
She spread the parchment on the table and spent a few minutes practicing flourishing letters and the signature she needed. Then she picked up a clean piece of parchment and wrote,  
  
 _If you two dunderheads think that I am unaware of your plans, then you should think again. You will do nothing to jeopardize the bond or Potter, because you will face me if you do. Deciding to split up the task into dealing with me and dealing with Potter will only be the beginning of your downfall._  
  
Pansy considered it for a second, then smiled and signed, _Professor Snape._  
  
She knew the professor’s handwriting from seeing it on countless essays over the years. She didn’t think it was perfect, but the reference to a specific part of Draco and Blaise’s conversation ought to shake them and make them act at least a little more cautiously. And by the time they came up with something else, maybe Potter and Professor Snape would be back in the game.  
  
She stood up, folded the parchment, and went to slide it under Draco’s door. He was the less stubborn of the two, at least as far as the bond went. Better to shake him up first. He would also go to share it with Blaise right away, Pansy thought, whereas Blaise might keep it to himself because he was afraid that Draco would back off on helping him if he didn’t.  
  
She heard Draco come over to pick up the parchment, and whisked back into her bedroom. Then she locked the door and draped herself on the bed as if asleep. That ought to convince anyone who did manage to look in. Pansy had been fooling her mother that way for years, and her mother had pretty sharp eyes.  
  
She did shake her head a little as she closed her eyes.  
  
 _Why do I have to do everything around here?_  
  
Then she snorted lightly to herself.  
  
 _Maybe I should think of it as future practice in politics._


	21. A Silent Warning

  
Severus shut his eyes and let his body relax. It was typical of him that when he finally got the chance to put down his burden, with Potter safe behind wards and charms and the other Slytherin students escaped whole from the Ministry and the Wizengamot, he could not sleep.  
  
Or perhaps the cause was his dream of Albus the last time he _had_ slept, and the way he would rather escape from confronting the man again.  
  
Severus sighed and lowered himself further and further into the darkness. Whether or not his mind slept or ran in circles, he could make sure that his muscles loosened and fell limp, his head rolled back on his neck, his hands no longer tightened in a desperate search for the wand and the potions flasks he needed to feel safe. He had learned the skill long ago, but it had served him best of all in this last year of the war. He needed true rest, craved it, but in its place, this controlled doze would sustain him for a few days.  
  
And a few days was all it had been, since the death of the Dark Lord and the cementing of the bond.  
  
Severus would have shaken his head, but an important rule of the relaxation he followed was that one must not move after control of the body had been yielded. Therefore, Severus let himself shake his head only in the internal sanctuary of his mind.  
  
Had there ever been someone so ill-equipped for the role of Lord as Potter was?  
  
His memory supplied several historical names, mostly from the cautionary stories that his mother had told him when he was young, and he grimaced. Yes, there had been. But most of them had destroyed themselves within a few months when going up against political enemies, and their vassals had made their own way after that, free to live and die.  
  
And there was an even more important distinction. None of them had had Severus Snape for a vassal.  
  
The shield mark on his arm did not burn now, perhaps because Potter and several of the others were asleep and that was the closest to quiescent that the bond could be. But Severus knew it was changing him, knew that he would not care so much for Potter’s survival if it was not. And his own desire to die had retreated into the background, an inconvenience now rather than a strategy to carry out immediately.  
  
If he was free…  
  
But he was not. That was the problem. Severus knew many Slytherins planned their lives exclusively around what they wanted, dreaming of what they would do when opponents and obstacles were removed. But Severus had worked his way under constraints for so long that he had begun to fear the _need_ of constraints was woven into his soul. This time, it was the Lord bond. Before, it had been the Dark Mark, and the need to be Dumbledore’s spy, and the guilt for causing Lily’s death.  
  
Severus paused.   
  
Of course he still felt guilty about Lily, he reassured himself a moment later. He would never _not_ feel guilty. He had sworn himself to her son’s protection because it was the only way he could still be close to some bit of her, but his own feelings for Potter, positive or negative, were as nothing but a shadow next to her fire.  
  
Yet…  
  
That guilt was less than it had been, a change Severus had never experienced before. Always, he had felt the looming blackness of that emotion in the back of his mind. Always, he had known it would throw his life into gloom even if by some great enchantment and strategy he survived the war with the Dark Lord.  
  
Yet. That shadow was not so dark now.  
  
Somewhere between contemplating the shadow that should have been there and the one that still was, the one embodied by the silver shield mark on his right arm, Severus slid into sleep.  
  
*  
  
It was long. It was hard. Many times, he almost turned back and gave up. Simpler to stay down here, where no one would expect him to do anything.  
  
But staying down there would be a betrayal of a friend. Either the friend who had died or the one who had come to rescue him. Which one, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything that had happened, and he didn’t really want to wake up because of that. He would have to deal with everything that made him less than sure.  
  
But in the end, after the long struggle on the path that slipped away like sand beneath his gripping fingers, Greg opened his eyes.  
  
He was on a shabby couch, in front of a large fire built on a hearth of dark stone. Greg sat up and looked around. This was so much like home, decay included, that for a second he thought about calling for his mum.  
  
But then he felt something strange on his right arm, the way that he knew he had through the mist in his mind even when he was asleep, and he turned it over. There was a shield mark there. It was silver.  
  
Greg knew he wasn’t at home, then.  
  
He sat there for a long time and stared into the fire, and then decided that he was bloody hungry and he wanted something to eat. Since no one was coming, and he didn’t know where he was, but no one had attacked him yet either, he could see about getting some food. He hopped down off the couch and wandered into the room next to it.  
  
That was just a corridor, set with doors, so Greg walked down it, opening them. He saw deserted rooms, and deserted rooms, and a library that he backed out of. Libraries were Draco’s thing, not Greg’s.  
  
Draco had helped him, though. For a moment, Greg wavered, wondering if Draco would show up if Greg sat in the library until he came. But hunger was stronger, and he shut the door there, too, and continued walking.  
  
At last he found his way to a dusty and cobwebbed kitchen. He settled down at the table in the middle and clapped his hands, the way that his mum usually called for their house-elf.  
  
Either there wasn’t a house-elf, though, or it was spelled to ignore Greg. Greg sighed, and stood up. Luckily, he had plenty of practice looking through cabinets for things to eat when their house-elf, Miti, was busy.  
  
He found a loaf of bread under a Preservation Charm in the third cabinet he tried, and sat down to rip off chunks with his hands. It seemed his wand was gone, but it wasn’t like Greg knew lots of Cutting Charms anyway. His mum had always said they were too dangerous for him.  
  
Greg _wanted_ his mum.  
  
He could feel his lip trembling, and he filled his mouth up with bread to keep from thinking about it. He didn’t want to cry. He wanted to eat. And if this was the only food they were going to offer him, then he’d keep eating.  
  
“Gregory.”  
  
The word made Greg jerk towards the kitchen doorway. He knew the voice wasn’t Draco’s, but he couldn’t help hoping. Draco was the one who had come to rescue him when he was at the bottom of his mind. Greg knew it, even though he couldn’t really _remember_ how he knew it. If he was hiding at the bottom of his mind, how could he remember things?  
  
But it was Blaise Zabini who stood in the doorway now, watching him eat. Greg grunted and kept eating. He knew that Zabini had all those fancy manners and the posh house that was a lot nicer than his mum and dad’s. That didn’t matter. He wasn’t the one who was Greg’s friend. Greg didn’t have to be nice to him.  
  
“You must be wondering where we are, and what happened to you,” Zabini went on, sliding into the room and up to the table. Greg watched him come. He supposed that he was graceful, but he didn’t have any reason to be. And he kept looking at Greg and _smiling._ The only people who smiled at him like that were his parents and Draco and Vince and sometimes Mr. Malfoy. Which meant Zabini was up to something.  
  
Vince would never get to be up to something again.  
  
Greg stuffed enough bread in his mouth that he thought he could plug up the thoughts, and Zabini winced. Greg chewed enough to get most of the throatful down, and then grunted an acknowledgment at Zabini.  
  
The other boy gave a sigh as this was all just too distressing for him. Maybe it was. Greg wanted to suggest that he get out of this house and go back to his mum’s, but his mouth was still too full, and food was more important than speaking.  
  
“You should know that we’re bonded to Potter now,” Zabini said.  
  
Greg thought of the silver mark on his arm, and nodded. That made sense. He thought he remembered a little of that. Maybe Draco had put the knowledge there, when he came and got Greg from the bottom of his mind.  
  
“But he’s negotiated with the Ministry to try us,” Zabini said, and made a little sweep with his hand around the kitchen. “In the meantime, we’re staying here. This is the Black house that Potter inherited from his godfather. He made an oath that we’re not going to escape from it, and none of us have wands.”  
  
Greg winced a little. He hated not having a wand. On the other hand, it would probably be worse for Zabini, because he didn’t have the strength to defend himself with his hands and feet the way Greg did.  
  
“Doesn’t that _matter_ to you?” Zabini demanded.  
  
Greg thought about it, and then decided to tell the truth. No reason not to. “Not as much as food,” he pointed out, and dug into the center of the loaf again. It was starting to look hollow now, and it crumbled beneath his fingers.  
  
“You’re disgusting,” Zabini said, although he said it in a mutter, because he thought that way Greg couldn’t hear him. Greg could have pointed out that he could hear him perfectly well, but he didn’t want to. Zabini was a berk. Greg crunched through another part of the crust before Zabini lifted his head and took a deep breath. “Listen. We—we wanted to make sure that we have a chance to get free from the bond.”  
  
That made Greg put the bread aside. “No one gets free from a bond,” he pointed out. “Not you. Not me. Not old Lords. If Potter’s our Lord, he’s our Lord for life.” He thought about that, and wondered if he would like it. Maybe not with Potter. But his mum had talked a lot about the old days and the way that families like the Goyles, who had some money but not a lot, were protected by people who had them as their vassals. The whole family could be protected, as long as they swore allegiance. Greg thought he would like to have someone to take care of him. If the Ministry had arrested them, then maybe that meant he wouldn’t see his parents for a long time, so _they_ couldn’t do it.  
  
“But we have a chance.” Zabini spoke quickly and softly. Greg blinked at him and wondered if he thought the soft tone made him sound intelligent. It didn’t. “This bond is new, and accidental, and Potter’s so _little_.”  
  
“He’s about your size,” Greg said, not understanding what Zabini was on about. Potter used to be little, but he’d shot up a bit during sixth year. He would never be Greg’s size, or Weasley’s, but he was closer to Draco’s.  
  
“I mean, he’s little in his soul.” Zabini was pressing forwards. “Petty. He doesn’t know how to control Slytherins like us.”  
  
“I’m not the same as you.” Greg thought he’d better point that out before Zabini did.  
  
Zabini put his hand over his eyes and muttered something that sounded like, “Merlin give me patience.” Greg thought of telling him that didn’t work, because his mum often said the same thing and she never had any, but his stomach still felt empty. He dipped his hand into the loaf and scooped out some more bread.  
  
Zabini finally dropped his hand away from his eyes and leaned forwards, saying precisely, “I know you’re not the same as me. But the _point_ is, you could help me and Draco win free of this bond. Potter doesn’t have the strength to control us. He’s dead tired right now after only performing a few magical deeds. You could help me and Draco get free. Draco’s your friend, right?” he added, as if he had the right not to know that, when he’d only lived with Greg and Draco for seven years.  
  
Greg looked at him. Something was wrong. Zabini had never cared about him. He had no reason to come and get Greg to help him if he had Draco, too. Draco was smart, and he could plan things, and if he came and told Greg to help Zabini, then Greg would do that.  
  
Something was really wrong for Zabini to be over here talking to him.  
  
“Who else is in the bond?” Greg asked. Zabini hadn’t said there were more people, but it made sense that there were more.  
  
Zabini frowned a little. “Well, Pansy.”  
  
Greg shrugged. Pansy had sometimes been kind to him and sometimes mean, mainly when she wanted something from Draco. She didn’t matter one way or another, except that Greg would rather not hurt her because sometimes she was kind. But if Draco said to hurt her, he would.  
  
“And Professor Snape.” Zabini spoke as though he didn’t think that should bother Greg, watching him from the corner of his eye. He jumped when Greg stood up and put the loaf of bread on the table.  
  
“No,” Greg said loudly.  
  
“Listen, Goyle—”  
  
“You’re crazy,” Greg told him. He could feel cold sweat on the back of his neck. Professor Snape was _strong._ Greg knew it didn’t matter how hard he could punch someone when it came to Professor Snape. He had some kind of spell that would always make it so _you_ were the one who got hurt. “You’re crazy and you’re stupid. I’m not helping you.”  
  
“Why would it be so good to be under a bond for the rest of our lives?” Zabini paced back and forth in front of the table the way Greg’s dad had when he first heard the rumors of the Dark Lord’s return. Zabini’s eyes were fixed on Greg, though, while Greg’s dad’s eyes had been fixed on the Dark Mark on his arm. “Everyone acts like it’s some great thing, or some _understandable_ thing. Well, it’s never going to be understandable for me. _Never_.”  
  
Greg frowned at him. He didn’t know much about Zabini, because Zabini didn’t stay around him, and he had never thought of what Zabini would be like under a bond. Greg could understand why it would bother Draco. Malfoys led all the time, and took care of other people. It would take Draco a lot of time to get used to someone leading him, instead.  
  
“Why?” Greg asked. “What’s so horrible about it?”  
  
Zabini paused and turned around to stare at him. “Surely even _you_ should be able to figure that out,” he said.  
  
Greg folded his arms. Draco had told him once that Zabini was a master of insults, and Greg had believed him because he had no particular reason to disbelieve Draco about anything. But this didn’t seem like mastering insults to Greg. “I know I’m not as smart as you. I’ve always known that. But even I know that being under a Lordship bond means that the Lord takes care of you.”  
  
“Potter tried to _kill_ me. I almost died.”  
  
Greg furrowed his forehead. That would make a difference. “What did you do?” That was one thing he knew. Lords didn’t attack their vassals unless they did something, because the bond would make them suffer if they did. And no one liked pain.  
  
Zabini made a little hiss out of the corner of his mouth like the kitten that Greg had had for a while, until his dad decided it was too much. “Nothing.”  
  
“You’re lying,” Greg said.  
  
“You don’t know _that_.”  
  
Greg shrugged. It just made sense. And if Zabini wouldn’t tell him what he was lying about, then maybe Draco would.  
  
Or Potter. That was a new thought to Greg. If he _had_ a Lord, that meant he had someone to take care of him, the way his parents had discussed. Potter would help him and shelter him and tell him what to do. That sounded wonderful, really.  
  
“Fine,” Zabini said, his voice a low hiss. “I ran away to the Forest, because I thought there might be centaurs there who could treat the bond mark as a skin infection and destroy it. They refused to intervene, though, and Potter came after me. I tried to kill him, and the bond punished me.”  
  
Greg spent a long time staring at him. He knew Zabini wasn’t stupid; he’d had it hammered into his head often enough over the course of this conversation. That meant he ought to be able to understand what it was about him that was making Greg stare.  
  
Zabini obviously didn’t, though, because his fingers started dancing a nervous little beat on the table. “What?” he asked at last.  
  
“No wonder you want to be away from him,” Greg said. “And no wonder that he doesn’t like you. And no wonder that he doesn’t trust you.”  
  
“So you’ll help me?” Zabini leaned forwards on the balls of his feet. “Because you can understand why I want to get away from him.”  
  
“No,” Greg said. “He didn’t punish you. The bond punished you. You got what you deserve. Because the bond doesn’t judge you like a person would do.”  
  
“Who told you that?” Zabini said, in the voice of someone who wanted to push Greg off a cliff. Greg had heard lots of that this past year, from other Death Eaters and other students.  
  
“My mum.”  
  
“Then your mum—” Zabini paused and eyed Greg’s fists. Greg looked down and saw that he was cracking his knuckles. He did that when someone insulted his family. But he wouldn’t beat Zabini up unless Zabini _kept_ saying it, for some reason. And he didn’t look stupid to Greg no matter what he said.  
  
“Fine,” Zabini said, his voice tight and full of controlled rage, something else Greg was familiar with from Mr. Malfoy. “Then I’ll do it by myself.” He flounced out of the room. Greg smiled. He had only ever seen one of his uncles flounce like that, when his aunt said that his uncle couldn’t have a new suit of clothes.  
  
But then his smile faded, and Greg sat there for a while in thought.  
  
It seemed that Professor Snape was part of the bond, and if Zabini didn’t want to go and talk to him, Greg worked out slowly, that meant he must be on the _opposite_ side from Zabini, and want to remain bonded to Potter. Maybe he even liked the thought of having a Lord who wouldn’t treat him like shit, like Greg did.  
  
So Greg had to go and tell him about Zabini. It was that simple.  
  
*  
  
Severus woke to a knock on his door. Of course it would be a knock, he thought, as he stood and reached for his conquered wand. He had just been relaxed, drifting off to sleep, so therefore it must be a knock.  
  
It was more pleasant than his last waking before that, the one that had involved hooded wizards crowding into his cell and casting the Calming Charm upon him, but that was all one could say for it.  
  
Though, Severus had to admit, he _did_ enjoy the way his own eyes widened when he opened the door and saw Gregory Goyle standing in the corridor. It was good to know that some things could still surprise him.  
  
“Mr. Goyle,” Severus said, the way he would have if they were still in school. He doubted that Gregory would enjoy changing the relationship they had always had at Hogwarts, where Severus called him by his last name and affected not to notice his incredible lack of skill in Potions. “To what do I owe the honor?”  
  
“I woke up,” Gregory said, staring up at him with that stolid face that Severus suspected spoke of troll blood a few generations back. If there was anyone who could stand the smell of the things, it would be a Goyle. “And I didn’t know where I was, but while I was getting some food, Zabini showed up and told me we were bonded to Potter and then he tried to get me to rebel with him and he said that you were on the other side with Potter. So I decided to be on the side that you were on.”  
  
It took Severus a moment to work that out, but when he did, he felt his face tighten. For once, Gregory didn’t flinch when Severus gave him a dark look, only stood there watching him. As he had a perfect right to do, Severus had to admit. Whether he could not understand the significance of the look or only knew that it was not directed at him, Severus was grateful. He did not wish to frighten the boy away from applying to him for help.  
  
“Thank you for reporting this information to me, Mr. Goyle,” Severus said, when he thought he had his voice under control and wouldn’t curse the thoughtless boy who _had_ to make his life harder. “I assure you that it will be taken care of.”  
  
“You’re not on his side, sir,” Gregory went on, staring intently at Severus. It was the most attention Severus had ever seen him pay to anything, including to food, and that made it slightly unnerving. Severus found himself wondering if Draco had perhaps left some of his intelligence left behind when he cut through the wall of Gregory’s memories. “Are you? You seem to be liking the bond.”  
  
“I can survive with it,” Severus said coolly. Of course Gregory would think of the world in such simple terms, that one stood either with Zabini or against him. “That is very different than being happy it is there.”  
  
Gregory shook his head, giving Severus a stare of uncertain wonder. “But why would you not want it there? It means someone has to take care of you. Someone has to pay the price if you fall. But not you. You can do what you like, and if you’re wrong, someone will tell you. You have a leader.”  
  
Severus tightened his hands on his wand, and then reminded himself again that it was hardly the boy’s fault he saw the world in so simple a perspective, and Severus could be gracious. “I would prefer to make my own decisions, as you put it, Mr. Goyle,” he said. “I would rather not have a Lord.”  
  
“Huh.” Gregory went on staring at him for a little while, then looked around. “Can I go and sleep in any of these bedrooms?”  
  
“Any that do not have someone in them,” Severus said, still fighting down his emotions. “Avoid the locked doors and the one with wards. That is Mr. Potter’s room.”  
  
“I figured,” Gregory said, turning away. “And you ought to call him Lord Potter, y’know.”  
  
Severus shut the door and shut his eyes, leaning his forehead briefly against the wood of it. It was simple, and infuriating, how one not particularly intelligent child had utterly undermined what he was thinking and cast him back into doubts.  
  
As well as waking him up.  
  
Severus turned and stalked back to bed, determined to rest his body once more if he could not rest his mind. Gregory would think of the bond as he needed to think of it, to survive. Severus would think of it his way.  
  
 _But in the morning, we will have a talk with Mr. Zabini, whose motives are not looking conducive to survival._   
  



	22. Like a Dark Volcano

  
Draco faced the mirror that had unexpectedly been on the wall of the room he was in, and spent a moment readjusting his robes. He hadn’t brought new ones with him, hadn’t been _allowed_ to bring new ones, so the best he could do was smooth out the creases and hope that would be enough.  
  
Today, he intended to confront Potter.  
  
He’d got that note under the door last night, and while he didn’t really believe Professor Snape had written it, it meant that _somebody_ had heard his conversation with Blaise last night. The likeliest candidate was Pansy, but that didn’t matter much. What mattered was that someone knew, and all the plans he and Blaise might have come up with had fallen into the dust.  
  
Draco appraised himself once more in the mirror, and was satisfied that not even his father could have found fault with what he saw there. Draco nodded once, rigorously, to himself, and spun to face the door.  
  
He’d had enough of sneaking about and plans that didn’t work and yielding and going along because he was too weak to do otherwise. The time had come to _confront._ The time had come to _face._ He had seen his father use the same tactics, although not often, when subtlety didn’t work and political strategies were countered by other enemies who could use the same strategies as well as a Malfoy could.  
  
So Draco was about to put a stop to things. They had gone far enough.  
  
He opened the door, and walked out, following the slight but definite tug from the shield mark on his arm. It seemed that Potter wanted to see him as badly as Draco wanted to see Potter.  
  
Draco smiled, glad that it felt as if his teeth were made of steel, and his stride was smooth and firm, quick, his steps striking the floor, but not as if he was in a hurry. His confrontation with Potter would go well.   
  
Because he willed it.  
  
*  
  
Harry sighed and took another sip of the tea he’d found in one of the cabinets to make for breakfast this morning. There wasn’t much else, except a mostly hollowed-out loaf of bread on the table. Harry nibbled a corner of it in one hand and studied the shield mark on his arm. He’d had worse breakfasts.  
  
The green dots on his mark had moved in the night. Two of them now clustered tightly at one corner of the shield, the nearest one to Harry’s elbow. Zabini and Draco, he knew. The two dots that represented Snape and Parkinson stood near each other on the other side, a perfect representation of conspiracy.  
  
And the lone dot in the middle, but closer to Snape and Parkinson, could only represent Goyle. He’d woken up at last.  
  
Which didn’t explain what Harry was going to do about him, or whether the faint burn in the mark came from him or not.  
  
But as he waited, the burn centered more and more on the green dot nearest his elbow, and he turned towards the kitchen door with the knowledge that Draco was coming closer and closer. Harry winced and set down his teacup. He wished this confrontation could have come at a later time. But if it had to happen, at least it had waited until he was awake and had eaten something.  
  
 _Not much_. But Harry had been equal to the Dursleys on less food. He ought to be the equal of someone smarter than they were with a little inside him.  
  
Draco swept into the kitchen and paused, _posed,_ really, with his arms stretching out to his sides as though he was inviting Harry to look at his clothes. Harry did. The robes were neatly pressed, probably by hand, and he looked as clean as could be expected when no one but Snape had magic at the moment. Harry folded his hands in front of him and waited.  
  
Draco curled his lip a little, probably because the expected tirade hadn’t come, and took a single sliding step towards him. “I want to hurt you for hurting my family,” he said.  
  
“I asked your father to make a sacrifice,” Harry said, as quietly as he could when he wanted to shout. He was still tired and hungry and wanted to be somewhere else, but the shield mark on his arm reminded him where his duty lay.  
  
 _Is it always going to lie somewhere else? Am I going to spend the rest of my life soothing people’s tempers and reminding myself not to snap because I can’t get angry with my vassals?_  
  
Harry wanted to close his eyes at that thought. He wanted to go back to bed and not get up for a long, long time.  
  
But none of those things would change Draco standing in front of him, angry and hurt. So he continued, “The blood-ghost can’t actually kill anyone except its chosen victim, which is you. It even warned me about that, but I didn’t understand the warning at the time. Snape was the one who had to make it clear to me. Your father may have wounded himself to get the blood I used to track you. But the blood-ghost didn’t kill him.”  
  
“Someone from the Ministry could do it.” Draco was leaning forwards, tense and trembling, his hands clenching into fists at his side.  
  
“Just like they could have broken into their cells and taken them,” Harry said. “But they _didn’t._ They only wanted the people actually bonded to me. I think your parents are safer at the moment than you are. People are only thinking of them as Death Eaters, not hostages they could use to control me.”  
  
“Not everything’s about _you_ ,” Draco said, and his trembling got more pronounced. “They might want to hurt them just because they were Death Eaters.”  
  
“I can’t do anything about that, unless I contact Stone and request permission to leave the house and go back to the Ministry and try to do something about it,” Harry said tiredly. “And the security on them will be _tight_ , now. Stone is ashamed that someone managed to snatch you lot from under her nose. She’ll be really firm about it not happening to your parents.”  
  
“That’s not good enough.” Draco was edging nearer. “They swore loyalty to you, and you’re just going to abandon them?”  
  
“It wasn’t a formal oath,” Harry said. He had to trust that mattered, after the ceremony Parkinson had told him to go through with Auror Stone. He braced his legs against the seat of the chair, and watched Draco. He knew that Draco was preparing to fight, and since they didn’t have their wands, that meant the Muggle method.   
  
Harry didn’t want to. Not because he was afraid, but because he didn’t think it would be a good thing for a lord to fight his vassal. What had happened to Zabini still haunted him.  
  
“You should have kept your promise.” Draco’s voice was low and so dark that Harry had trouble distinguishing the words. They seemed to blend together, like the sounds in a tiger’s growl. “And checked your words. What you said is the _wrong answer_.”  
  
He flung himself forwards.  
  
Harry twisted the opposite way, and stood up as Draco slammed into the chair where Harry had been sitting. Harry swallowed and found his hand groping at his side, looking for his wand or at least the wand he’d taken from the wizards who had captured his vassals. He wanted some way to settle this.  
  
And then it occurred to him, as his right arm flared like a branding iron, that he _did_ have a way to settle it. Maybe a way that he’d better choose, before the Lordship bond did it for him.  
  
He looked at Draco and put as much steel into his voice as he could, low and precise. “I rescued you. I made an oath for you. I accepted your word that you would cooperate with going to the Ministry in exchange for my protection. Stop fighting me.”  
  
Draco stared at him with his mouth hanging loose, his jaw slack. Harry felt as though he was about to fly. That was how fast his blood was going, his heart was going, and the burning on his arm had transmuted a little bit, not as painful. Maybe the bond was at least trying to reward him for doing the right thing.  
  
Then Draco said, “Are you _mad_?” and leaped straight at him, his hand connecting with Harry’s jaw.  
  
Even as Harry’s head snapped backwards, he felt the bond react, and braced himself to hear Draco’s screams of pain. But nothing happened. Harry picked himself up, holding his cheek and wincing. He wondered if the bond considered just attacking him with a fist less bad than attacking him with a spell, the way Zabini had done.  
  
Then he looked up and saw that Draco had frozen. His arm was still out, as though he was swinging back or trying to catch his balance, but his feet were rooted to the floor. His face was locked in an unnatural expression, between one true emotion and another. And the silver mark on his arm shone, dazzling.  
  
Harry swallowed and stood up, shaking his head. He didn’t know if the bond was holding Draco still so that Harry could punish him, or if it was just making sure that Draco wouldn’t break the oath Harry had sworn by trying to leave.  
  
He didn’t care, in fact. He was _tired._ He had done all he could, found a way to get out of the holding cells and to the place where his vassals were being held captive against enormous odds, and all that mattered was that it got thrown back in his face, again and again. Nothing mattered to Draco, it seemed, except the ways that he could blame Harry for hurting his father.  
  
Harry stalked up to Draco. Draco’s eyes twitched once, in their sockets, to try and focus on him, but the bond’s hold on him prevented even that. It was one of the more disgusting things Harry had seen.  
  
“I’m going to find a way to break the Lordship bond,” Harry said. “Today, or soon. I don’t want this any more than you do. Did you think I _did_? That I _enjoyed_ having a bunch of people tied to me who hated me? No. I’m going to let you go, since that’s what you want so much. And I’ll let you take your chances with the Ministry that you claim wants to punish your parents and wants to hurt you, too. See how well you do without my protection.  
  
“I _hate_ this. No matter what I do, it’s wrong. Fine.” Harry snapped his fingers, and the bond relented, nearly sending Draco staggering into the table. “Leave if you want to. I don’t _care._ Shut the fuck up and _get out of my face._ ”  
  
There was a weird shimmer in the air between him and Draco, something like a localized whirlwind. Then the magic shoved Draco away from Harry, and out of his path. Draco caught himself on the wall before he fell over, and proved that he could move in other ways by closing his mouth, but he didn’t stop staring at Harry.  
  
“Kreacher!” Harry called. He didn’t care that it hadn’t worked last night. Right now, he didn’t care about anything except getting more food in him than he had already. Maybe he’d had to endure starvation when he was with the Dursleys, but he didn’t now, and he _wanted_ something to eat.  
  
Kreacher promptly popped up, although with a surprised look on his face. He took a long, hard look at Harry, and then bowed and murmured, “Lord Potter is needing somethings from humble Kreacher?”  
  
“Make me some breakfast,” Harry said. “I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s hot and sweet. And bring it to me in the library.” He turned back towards Draco and made for the door, watching Draco coldly.  
  
He had enough sense to stay out of the way, at least. Harry gave him one more cold look and lifted his hand to touch his jaw.  
  
“That one was free,” he said. “None of the rest will be.”  
  
And he went up to the library, where he hoped idiots would leave him in _peace_ for a while.  
  
*  
  
 _That could have been more disastrous._  
  
Draco stood there and stared down at his own hands. They moved now when he flexed them; they opened and turned back and forth.  
  
And that meant he was all right. He’d thought for a second, when he felt the force gripping him and pressing down on his muscles, that he was going to simply break apart. The Lordship bond could do that if it judged that he was in need of punishment. He hadn’t known that, before now, but it was hard to deny the power of something you’d literally felt in your bones.  
  
Draco swallowed and sagged against the table.  
  
It could have been more disastrous, but it hadn’t gone _well._ He’d pictured coming in and saying something that would make Potter realize how stupid he had been, denying sanctuary and protection to Draco’s parents. It would be witty, Draco knew that. It would be almost _intolerably_ right and gracious and true, and Potter would redden and cast his eyes towards the floor and know himself humbled by Draco’s display of eloquence.   
  
It was the kind of thing his father would have done.  
  
Draco had never pictured himself punching Potter, and Potter performing feats of wandless magic, wielding the bond like a whip. Draco had thought they were equal—in some senses of the word—because none of them had wands except Professor Snape. And while he was on Potter’s side for the moment, Draco didn’t entertain the illusions that Potter probably did. Snape wouldn’t stay there, not if Draco and Blaise could show him that there was a chance of breaking free.  
  
All of that should have happened. Draco should have made Potter stammer and apologize and promise to go and rescue his parents right away, or at least free Draco himself from the Lordship bond.  
  
He had the last, at least. At the cost of knowing that he wasn’t in control here, that Potter was a lot more powerful than he was even if they were both unarmed, and that Potter could have done a lot worse to Draco if he hadn’t controlled the bond.  
  
Draco scowled down at his hands again. That wasn’t at all the way his father would have done it.  
  
He turned around to leave the kitchen, but there was a noise like water boiling over, and Draco whipped around again. He realized a second later that it was just the house-elf clearing his throat. Apparently he’d been away from them long enough to forget what it sounded like.  
  
“What?” he demanded.  
  
“Master Draco Malfoy is liking some breakfast, too.” The house-elf didn’t make it a question. He was piling pieces of toast that looked as if they had soaked in butter on a plate in the middle of the table, and surrounding it were thick slabs of treacle tart that made Draco wrinkle his nose. Who would eat those at this time of the morning?   
  
_Potter, apparently._  
  
Draco bit his tongue. He wondered how long it would take him to stop running into invisible walls, to remember that Potter was the one with the power in this particular situation, and Draco had no say.  
  
“Master Draco is sitting down and eating something,” said the elf. Draco squinted, trying to remember—he’d had other things to concentrate on at the time—and decided Potter had called him Kreacher. “Kreacher is busy offering the rest to Lord Potter.” He picked up another plate that also looked as if it had a cup of steaming tea on it and a smaller plate of kippers. Draco shuddered. He would have to come to _some_ compromise with Potter on the matter of breakfast.  
  
“Why?” Draco asked. “I’m not hungry.” He was, actually, but while he might have to let Potter dictate some of the terms on which he lived, he wasn’t about to let a house-elf do it.  
  
Kreacher looked at him as though he couldn’t believe that Draco would be that stupid. “Because you _is_ being hungry, and that is being displeasing to Lord Potter,” he said, and vanished with the plates.  
  
Draco scowled at nothing. But in the end, it was silly to resist food, and he was hungry whether or not he was going to eat in front of Potter. He sat down and reached for the kettle that Kreacher had left, picking up a piece of toast with the other hand. It wouldn’t be the worst breakfast he had ever had, not when it wasn’t under the supervision of the Dark Lord.  
  
Now and then, he rubbed his arm. The shield mark wasn’t cold or burning now. It was vibrating gently instead, like a hive of bees touched from the outside. Draco assumed that meant Potter was busy.  
  
 _With breakfast? With finding a way to break the bond?_  
  
Draco finished his tea and his first piece of toast, and sighed. His chance to be taken into Potter’s confidence was probably gone for now.  
  
*  
  
Greg turned into the library the minute he passed it. He knew there might be food in the kitchen, but the point was, there were the smells of tea and toast coming out of the library, and it was one less flight of stairs to walk down.  
  
Potter sat in a chair with a big book in his lap. Greg glanced at him, and then at the food on the table in front of him, and frowned. If it was here, it was probably Potter’s food. Greg knew that there was something specific you were supposed to do to ask permission from your Lord to eat, but he couldn’t remember what it was.  
  
“Hullo.” Potter was staring at him in surprise. Greg looked up at him again. “When did you wake up?”  
  
Greg looked back at him, more than a little grateful. That was a simple question. That meant he could answer it. “Yesterday night,” he said. “My Lord. I ate a little bread and went to my room.” He thought a second, and then decided that if he could tell Professor Snape about this, he could tell his Lord. Maybe Potter even needed to know about it, because he might not know that Zabini hated him that much. “Zabini tried to get me to rebel with him, but I told him no.”  
  
Potter’s mouth fell open a little. Then he sat up and nodded, as though Greg had told him something he’d already known. Greg winced. He knew the Dark Lord had punished his father when that happened. He hoped Potter wouldn’t punish him.  
  
But Potter just said, “If you only ate bread last night, you must be hungry. Help yourself.” He waved at the plate.  
  
Greg had to smile at him as he walked towards the table, even though he’d never done that before. Potter was _nice._ It wasn’t every Lord that would give you treacle tart. His mum had said that once, when she caught him eating it for breakfast.  
  
Here, he got to have it for breakfast with no one bothering him. That was already better than a lot of things he’d thought about.  
  
“Why did Zabini think you could help him?” Potter asked. He was watching Greg eat, but without flinching and looking away the way even Draco sometimes did. Maybe he’d already eaten that way himself. The table said so. “You just woke up.”  
  
Greg nodded, realized his mouth was full, and swallowed it down before he spoke. “Because he wants people to rebel against you, and I didn’t know much about you since I just woke up. So he picked me because I was convenient.” He knew that being convenient meant a lot. It was why he had ended up helping most of Draco’s plans last year.  
  
Potter tapped a finger against his jaw, then winced. Greg leaned in and narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know a lot, but he knew what you looked like when someone beat you up, and there was the mark of a fist on Potter’s jaw.  
  
“Who beat you up?” he asked. It couldn’t have been Professor Snape. He would have used his wand. And Pansy only thought she punched that hard.  
  
Potter looked up, eyes narrowed as though he had decided to be disgusted again. “Draco,” he said.  
  
Greg stared at the food in his hands. He wondered if he should be eating it. Draco had always been his leader, and if Draco was fighting with Potter, then Greg should walk away and join Draco, and that meant leaving the food here.  
  
But…it was good food. And he was so hungry.  
  
“Why did Draco punch you?” Greg asked. He didn’t know if he could understand the answer—sometimes he never did when Mr. Malfoy explained things, and Draco was like that, too—but he could see if he did.  
  
Potter continued to watch him. Greg drew himself up and glared back. Sure, he was pretty stupid, but Potter wasn’t even _trying_ to explain. And Greg knew a little about how Gryffindors thought, too. They were supposed to try and see if things would work even when they probably wouldn’t.   
  
“Because he believes that I hurt his family,” Potter said, his voice blank, like Mr. Malfoy’s. “I did what I could to rescue you, but he still takes it that way.”  
  
Greg thought as hard as he could. It was all mixed up with the memories of the bottom of his mind, and Vince dying, but he told himself not to think about that, and so he didn’t. “You did it to rescue us?” he asked. That was the important thing, he decided, the most important thing.  
  
“Yes,” Potter said. “I had—I had Mr. Malfoy send me some blood, and I smeared that on the bond mark, and I used that to track Draco.”  
  
Greg blinked. He didn’t know everything that had happened while he was asleep, but he knew one thing. “Then you did it to rescue all of us,” he said. “Because I was with Draco, and they took all of us, didn’t they?” He didn’t know whether that was a guess or intelligence or something he remembered, but he was sure it was right.  
  
Potter nodded, looking puzzled about where Greg was going.  
  
“Then you did what a Lord was supposed to do,” Greg said. He could eat again. Potter might be doing complicated things, but he did uncomplicated ones, too. He had given Greg food, and he had rescued him. “Maybe Draco doesn’t like it. I think Draco wants to be a Lord himself. But you’re the Lord. So he should just shut up and listen to you.”  
  
Potter blinked several times, then smiled at him. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But I learned today that I can make the bond do things when I really want them to. So now I’m just looking up ways to make the bond dissolve itself.”  
  
Greg was so afraid he dropped his toast on his hand. Then he picked it up and ate it again. But he did say, after he finished it, “Then you won’t be our Lord anymore.”  
  
Potter nodded at him. “That’s the way Draco wants it.”  
  
“But that’s because he wants to be a Lord himself,” Greg said. He leaned forwards. He had to make Potter see. “I don’t want to be. I want to stay with you. I want someone to protect me. Please?”  
  
Potter closed his eyes and sat there as if Greg was asking him a hard question. Greg didn’t see what was so hard about it. _He_ would have known the answer if someone had asked him.  
  
But Potter wasn’t saying no right now. So Greg held his breath, and waited, and hoped.


	23. Speak of the Willing

  
Harry sighed and took another bite of treacle tart, because he felt he needed it. Goyle didn’t even glance at the plate Harry had picked it up from, though. He just sat watching Harry, more than ever like a dog.   
  
Harry was starting to wonder how Draco had coped with the responsibility of leading _two_ people this dependent. At the moment, he could almost find it in him to be grateful for the rebellion that Zabini seemed intent on having. That seemed more natural to him than what Goyle wanted from him.  
  
“You realize that you could do other things?” Harry asked, willing himself to keep his face and his body calm, so as not to reject Goyle right away.  
  
Goyle’s brow wrinkled. “You mean, lead myself?” He sounded more than faintly horrified at the idea.  
  
“Well, you could still have friends to help you,” Harry said. “But you could live on your own and have a career of your own as long as you’re free of the bond. If it keeps existing, then you might never have freedom to do as you like.”  
  
He thought that last statement would probably be the most persuasive to a Slytherin, but Goyle’s brow cleared even as he watched, and he shook his head at Harry with an indulgent little smile. “Oh, no,” he said. “I know that I’m not good on my own. And I don’t have any friends except Draco. If he’s under the bond, I should be, too.”  
  
Harry kept from bowing his head into his hands and tugging at his hair, but it was a heroic effort. He stood up and shoved one of the books he held across the table to Goyle. Goyle looked at it, but without interest.  
  
“This says that Lord bonds can get corrupt,” Harry said, and he tried to sound serious enough that Goyle would pay attention no matter what. “The Lord likes more and more control. He likes making people do things. I don’t feel that way right now, but lots of Lords do. I might get that way later. The bond—it _changes_ things.”  
  
Goyle frowned at him again, but said, “It hasn’t changed me. I know that I want a leader, and that’s true.” He ate another piece of treacle tart. Harry thought he was waiting to say something, and then realized the conversation, as far as Goyle was concerned, was over with, when he added innocently, “What’s for dinner?”  
  
“Lunch,” Harry said automatically, then sighed. “Being in a bond really doesn’t matter to you.”  
  
Goyle puffed up. “Of course it matters! It means I have someone to protect me and tell me what to do.” He looked at the book again. “And read for me. Draco never made me read, you know.” He glanced up at Harry with liquid eyes like a puppy’s. Harry thought he might just have found the reason that Goyle had been Sorted into Slytherin.  
  
Harry collapsed back into his chair. “But I promised the others…” Then he trailed off. If he could make the bond more flexible, take control of it and tell it what to do, then maybe he could tell it to free some of his vassals but leave others under the bond. Being responsible for one person still wasn’t ideal, but it would be better than five.  
  
He turned back to the books in front of him. He hadn’t found anything like that so far, but then, he hadn’t exactly been looking for it. If he _could_ find something like that, then he would have to learn how to practice it as soon as possible.  
  
*  
  
Greg licked a few crumbs from his fingers and watched Potter. He supposed he should think of him as Lord Potter. It would take him a little while to get used to that, though. It had taken a while to get used to thinking of Mr. Malfoy as Mr. Malfoy, too. He had wanted to call him Lord Malfoy.  
  
Potter kept bending over the books as if they would tell him something. Maybe they would. Books never seemed to tell Greg much of anything, but he knew other people could hear their voices.   
  
Potter looked up. Greg froze in reaching for the next plate on the table. Maybe Potter was going to tell him that he couldn’t have any more.  
  
But Potter just shook his head as though he wanted to reassure Greg, and then said, “Have you ever heard of someone with a lot of vassals only having a few vassals later?”  
  
Greg thought about that as hard as he could. His favorite stories had been the ones about Lords, and his mum had told them over and over again, because they were her favorite stories, too. Finally, he nodded.  
  
“There was Lady Bersalla,” he said. “She had ten vassals at the beginning, but two of them died, and she released three. So she had five at the end.” He was proud of himself for keeping the numbers in order. It had been a long time since he heard that story.  
  
Potter tapped his fingers on his knees and looked intent. “How did she release them?”  
  
Greg said, “Shhh. I have to think of the story, and then I’ll know.” He knew he couldn’t do this if Potter was asking him questions all the time, and interrupting his memory.  
  
Potter stayed quiet. Maybe he really wanted to know the story, too. Greg leaned further and further back into the couch, and shut his eyes so hard that he saw little stars dancing on the backs of the lids. He knew that meant he was close to seeing the memory.  
  
And then he heard his mum’s voice speaking into his ears, slow and gentle, telling him the tale of Lady Bersalla.  
  
“She became Lady because several other pure-blood families came to her and asked her to,” Greg whispered, still concentrating as hard as he could. He could _do_ this. He could tell Potter the truth and content him, and if he was good to him, then Potter would keep being his Lord. That was the bargain, Greg knew. You did things for Lords, and they protected you. “They were all dying. They didn’t have any children, and they had lots of enemies. They knew that Lady Bersalla was a powerful witch. So they sheltered under her, and she cast the spell that meant they were her vassals.”  
  
Potter stirred—Greg could hear it—but he didn’t interrupt, so Greg went on telling the story. “She promised that she would protect them, and she would bear three children. One of the children would be her heir. The other two children would become the heirs of two of the pure-blood families. The other families were so old and dying that they didn’t want heirs, because they wouldn’t live to raise them.”  
  
“I have to have _children_?” Potter sounded horrified, which Greg thought was weird. Didn’t he always want children? That was what Greg’s mum said, anyway. She said Potter must be so lonely because he didn’t have any members of his family left. So he would want children once he came to the wizarding world and found a proper witch to have them with.  
  
“I’m telling the story,” said Greg sternly, which was the same thing his mum always said right now. He didn’t know if he should talk to his Lord that way, but he did know that he would forget the story if Potter kept on going like this.  
  
Potter subsided into grumbling. That meant Greg could keep going. He took a deep breath, and did it.  
  
“The families were content with the bargain. But one of them decided that Lady Bersalla wouldn’t keep her word, because she didn’t get pregnant for two years. So they told her to release them. And Lady Bersalla did it.”  
  
“What _was_ the way she did it?”  
  
Greg paused, then sighed and opened his eyes. “The story doesn’t say. I need to write to my mum, my Lord. She would know.”  
  
Potter sounded tired. “Please write to her. Tell her that you’re all right and anything else she needs to know.” He paused, and then added, “Do you think your parents might be home right now? Or would they be somewhere else?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Greg clasped his hands in front of him, wincing. His Lord had asked him one question, _one_ question, and already he couldn’t answer it. “I don’t know where they are right now.” He thought his dad might have been fighting with the Dark Lord, but Greg hadn’t seen him, and he had no idea where his mum was.  
  
“Hey, it’s okay.” Potter’s hand was suddenly on his shoulder, Potter’s face in his. Greg started a little, and was glad that he didn’t bring his hands up in a defensive maneuver after all, the way he _almost_ had. “I didn’t mean to make you upset. We’ll handle this somehow.” Potter leaned back and bit his lip, and then stood up fully and nodded decisively. “I’ll write to your mum, but I’ll also ask the others. If one person knows something about releasing Lordship bonds, then the others should, too.”  
  
Greg caught his hand. “But you won’t make me leave?”  
  
Potter looked down at him, and there were all sorts of complex expressions on his face. Greg didn’t understand them. He hoped that Potter wouldn’t make him try. Things in general were too complicated for Greg. This would just make them harder. It was easiest if he could let someone else take them over.  
  
 _What’s going to happen when Draco wants to take them over?_  
  
But Greg rejected the thought. So far, Draco _hadn’t_ come to him and asked to take them over. So Greg was free to do as he wanted, and what he wanted right now was to stay with the Lord that fate had given him.  
  
His mum said that fate wasn’t often kind, but it was, right now.  
  
Potter reached down and squeezed his shoulder. “I won’t make you leave,” he said, and even though he was a Gryffindor and his voice shook a little and Greg didn’t have any reason to trust him, he did now.  
  
*  
  
“I need to know what you know about releasing Lordship bonds.”  
  
Severus leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table and regarded the ceiling. There was an interesting crack running from one side of it to the other that he had never noticed in the meetings of the Order of the Phoenix. He resisted the temptation to reach up and run his hand along it.  
  
“Snape? Are you listening to me?”  
  
Severus snapped his head down. “It is _Severus_ ,” he said. “If you are going to refuse to address me by a term of respect.”  
  
Potter paused, looking as foolish as he could no longer afford to look, his hand on the door. Then he sighed and rubbed his jaw, wincing as he did it. Severus wondered if he had hit his absurd neck against a pillow and weakened it. “Sorry. Between Draco wanting to be free of the bond and Greg wanting to stay in it and thinking that someone knows a way to weaken the bond but not actually finding it, it’s been a busy morning.”  
  
“I am glad that Gregory is awake,” Severus said, warming his hands on the teacup. “But you just now spoke of them both by their first names. I would appreciate the same courtesy.”  
  
“I didn’t think you would think it was courtesy,” Potter said slowly, and sat down across from him. “But anyway, Greg said that his mum used to tell him stories about bonds and how some Lords or Ladies could release them and let vassals go free. I wondered if you’d heard of some of the same stories.”  
  
Severus could answer that, or he could pursue what was the most important matter of the darkening bruise on Potter’s jaw, and he chose to do what was practical. “Who hit you?”  
  
Potter flushed and promptly covered his jaw with one hand. “It was Draco,” he said, at least meeting Severus’s eyes without any silly attempt to hide. “But I don’t think that’s what matters here—”  
  
“Why would you think that?” Severus leaned forwards. “Not only are you injured, which may reduce your effectiveness to do research and fight for us, but the bond could have punished Draco.”  
  
Potter met his eyes steadily. “All it did was make him stand still, and then it moved him when I told him to get out of the way. It was actually a good thing, because after that, I started thinking the bond might be more flexible than I knew and it was possible to command it to do things. The bond will protect me, and if I can release it, then I can let Draco and Zabini go.” He tapped a finger on the table. “That’s why I want to know if you know any stories about someone releasing the bond. It might be days or weeks before Mrs. Goyle can get back to us. Greg admitted that he didn’t know where she was.”  
  
Severus touched his forehead, and then his right arm and his left arm, marking the source of all his various problems. “If you begin to think and believe that it was a _good_ thing for one of your vassals to hit you, then that might influence the bond’s response to later situations, ones that are more violent,” he said harshly. “Did you not _think_ of that, Potter? That you might change the balance of power between you and your vassals? The bond can only react to protect you if you want to be protected!”  
  
“That’s not something you said before,” Potter protested, lifting his chin. “How was I supposed to know that? There are all these things that suddenly people are telling me, but I didn’t know them before!”  
  
Severus regained his breath and control of his temper with some difficulty. “I want you to demand an apology from Draco,” he said. “And I am thinking less of the effect on Draco and more of the one on Mr. Zabini,” he added, when Potter opened his mouth. “If Zabini thinks Draco can get away without punishment, then he may try something else again.”  
  
“And then the bond would punish him,” Potter echoed again, looking miserable. “All right. I’ll talk to him.” He turned around, probably hearing, as Severus had begun to a few moments ago, the footsteps on the stairs. He seemed to brace himself, probably wondering if it would be an ordeal to make Draco apologize.  
  
But Pansy stepped into the kitchen instead, nodded to both of them, and came over to fetch a cup of tea herself, asking, “Then I suppose you know that Zabini and Draco are plotting against both of you? They were having a conversation about how Zabini should come up with a way to fight you, sir, and then Draco would join him in executing the plan and fighting Potter.”  
  
Potter leaned forwards and placed his head on the table.   
  
Severus was terribly afraid that he might feel like doing the same thing himself. He prepared his tea with cold fingers, then leaned back and looked Pansy in the eye. “You are sure of this?” Pansy, her mouth full of bread and butter, nodded, and Severus sighed. “How?”  
  
“I overheard them last night, of course.” Pansy swallowed and leaned back in her chair, regarding them with interest. “Are you going to challenge them to a duel?”  
  
Potter opened his mouth. God knew what he would have said to that, but Severus could guess that it would be some more dunderheaded maundering about how he couldn’t fight people, he was their Lord, and the bond would give him an unfair advantage. He spoke before he and Pansy, the only sensible members of the bonded group right now, could be asked to listen to it. “A duel would be unwise. It would give them too much acknowledgment, put them on a footing with you that you do not want them on.”  
  
Pansy, of course, understood him at once, since she was a Slytherin, and cocked her head. “True. I didn’t think of that.”  
  
“What kind of footing would it put them on?” Potter asked, and his voice was high and haughty, his eyes fixed on Severus as though he wondered what could possibly come out of his mouth good enough to justify arguing against a duel.   
  
“It would treat them as equals,” Severus said. “They are not.”  
  
“I _won’t_ listen to you talking about how Lords are worth more or something,” Potter snapped. “That’s not the kinds of tales of Lords I came here to listen to.”  
  
“You _fool_.” Severus poured contained power into the word, and noticed that the mark on his right arm was not burning. That was an excellent indication that he was performing his function as Shield at the moment, he thought, protecting Potter against the consequences that might happen if he went ahead and listened too much to his instincts. “You are _not our equal._ You have greater power than we do. I have a wand, but you could force me to hand that over to you. By all the laws and customs of pure-blood tradition, you have the right to demand it. You have not, but I know it is because you choose to grant me the grace of retaining it. And you have the power of the bond that protected you from Draco this morning. Nothing can match that. You could break my arm before I could cast against you, were I so stupid as to attempt it. You think we are _all the same_?”  
  
“I just meant—we’re all worth the same.”  
  
Potter sounded terribly, terribly bewildered. Severus shook his head. “There may be a way to release the bond. But unless and until it happens, no, we are not equals. We are vassals and Lord.”  
  
Potter took a deep breath and seemed to sink into himself. Severus hoped it was _communion_ with himself, that he could see the sense of what Severus and Pansy were saying, and come out of this more ready to fight.  
  
Pansy caught his eye. Severus shook his head. He did not think they ought to interrupt. Potter would agree with them, or he would not. In the end, although they might have advantages in attempting to persuade Potter that the others did not, what Severus had said held true for them as well. They were the vassals, and he the Lord.  
  
Pansy scowled mildly and watched Potter with concealed eagerness, opening her mouth to speak before Severus thought she ought to do so. But then it turned out that she was doing it as Potter looked up, and at the sight of his eyes, she interrupted herself.  
  
There was a flame in Potter’s eyes, and his hands clenched in front of him as he forced himself out of the chair. Severus stood up with him, keeping a wary gaze on him. He distrusted the mood change. Potter might have gone from determined to treat everyone like a happy Gryffindor to treating them like an angry Gryffindor.  
  
“Ask Zabini and Malfoy to come here, please,” Potter told Pansy, the sound of his voice windy and distant.  
  
Pansy bowed a little and scurried off. Severus watched Potter. Potter was not watching him back. Instead, he looked at the far wall, and his breathing was soft and rapid.  
  
“What will you do?” Severus asked at last.  
  
“Tell them that I’m aware of their plans, that I’m working on a way to release the bond—if anyone can _tell me how_ —” for a moment, Severus heard the snarl of balked desire in the back of his voice “—and that fighting against me would be stupid. They shouldn’t want to be free until after the trials, anyway. What would Draco’s protection be, with his parents cooped up? And I don’t have any idea what Zabini’s mother’s status is.”  
  
Severus raised his eyebrows and nodded. “If you can present it that calmly and reasonably, you stand a chance of convincing them.”  
  
“I hope so.” Potter turned back towards the stairs, folding his arms and seeming to shield himself in an invisible cloak of dignity and power. Severus cocked his head. He could not believe that he was using such terms of James’s son.  
  
 _What about Lily’s?_  
  
Severus had to shake his head a minute later, though. No, he had never dreamed even of a child of Lily’s, or Lily herself for that matter, doing this. Lily had been Muggleborn, reared in a world that had long ago decided Lordships were defunct, at least in the manner the wizarding world constructed them. She would have wanted to free her vassals, and she might not have been able to reconcile herself to the necessity of an ultimatum.  
  
But this young man, who had stood before the Wizengamot, could.  
  
Severus was eager to see what he did next.  
  
*  
  
Draco followed Pansy into the kitchen with a determinedly calm face. He had expected punishment sooner than this, really, for the punch he had given Potter earlier. Blaise, beside him, was walking with a stiffer neck and an apparent ambition to say to Potter exactly what he thought of him. It was the only reason Draco could imagine that he would look _eager._  
  
 _The more he refuses to look, the harder he will fall._  
  
But Draco couldn’t worry about Blaise right now. He had to worry about what Potter would do to him instead, and he hoped that he could do something to soften matters if he took a step into the kitchen and bowed.  
  
Potter stood there like a—well, like a young Lord, really, Draco thought, with his arms folded and the bond drawn up around him. Currently, it wasn’t making the mark on Draco’s arm flare, and it must not be doing it with Blaise, either, if he could still stand there and appraise Potter the way he was doing.  
  
“I will say this once,” Potter said, quietly, but with more force than if he had shouted. “I am working on a way to release the bond. It will take some time, since at least one of my other vassals wants to remain with me.”  
  
 _Greg,_ Draco thought. _It has to be Greg._ He wanted to swallow, to ask why Greg hadn’t come to him and asked for protection, but he was afraid that he knew the answers already. So he stayed silent.  
  
“In the meantime,” Potter said, “fighting against me would be the stupidest thing you could do. You’ll need protection from the Ministry, and they have no reason to give you fair trials if you’re not my vassals. The promises that Auror Stone made me for their protection were to _me,_ not anyone else.” He was looking at Draco. “The best chance for your parents, for your families, is if you have someone else’s protection until the trials are done.”  
  
Draco nodded jerkily. He couldn’t deny what Potter said when it came to _him_ , though whether Potter had really done anything to protect his parents was more debatable. And he would debate it.  
  
Later.  
  
“I need information on how to release a bond,” Potter said, his eyes narrowing. “Greg told me a story about a Lady named Bersalla, but he didn’t know how she released the bond. I need to know if you have any information on that.”  
  
“I do,” Blaise said.  
  
Draco eyed him cautiously sideways. He’d thought Blaise would have volunteered that earlier if he had it. On the other hand, Blaise’s mother knew all sorts of esoteric things, and had passed them down to her son. Maybe he just hadn’t made the connection until now.  
  
“You have my permission to tell me,” Potter said.  
  
Blaise’s eyes shone. He took a step forwards.   
  
Draco’s eyes widened. He knew that look on Blaise’s face. He had seen it when Blaise was getting ready to confront Death Eaters, and when he’d had particularly severe detention, and exams he wasn’t sure he could pass. It was the look he wore when he intended to fling himself at a problem and wear it down that way.  
  
And he saw something else: the gleam of a knife in Blaise’s hand.  
  
He opened his mouth, but the bond reacted before he could, and the kitchen filled with dazzling light.  
  
Followed, a second later, by the smell of cooking flesh.


	24. The Lioness

  
Harry could feel the bond yanking against his control. It was fed by the posture he had assumed, his determination to get _answers_ from Blaise for once instead of letting himself be put aside. It wanted to punish someone who was going against him, one of his _vassals_ who was trying to push Harry around and hurt him, and it wanted to use fire.  
  
Harry raised a hand and curled his fingers in. The bond was right there, shining in his mind, and although Harry supposed he could have put his hand on his shield mark and achieved even stronger contact that way, he didn’t fancy having his palm burned right now.  
  
The bond coursed through his grasp. Harry tightened his hand further, and it shivered and spluttered to a stop.  
  
The immediate fit it tried to throw was a little amusing. But only a little.  
  
Harry tightened his hold. _He_ was master here, not the bond. If the bond cared so much about his dignity as a Lord and his ability to resist threats, then it had to be flexible. Sometimes Harry couldn’t act like a Lord because it would make people suspicious. Sometimes he would have to wait to punish someone, or take vengeance. Attacking the instant that one of his vassals rebelled against him was stupid.  
  
There was a brief moment when he thought he could _see_ the bond, a shining red and gold thread of fire that coiled through his palm and seared and seared and seared. But then it shivered and collapsed against him, and the sight of it vanished again.  
  
Harry breathed out carefully. He didn’t really care if he couldn’t see it right now, as long as he knew he had that option.  
  
And now he thought he knew why he hadn’t been able to find an answer about how to make the bond do what he wanted in the Black library. They’d thought the answer was too obvious to be written down—or they hadn’t written it down because they assumed anyone who read the books about Lordship bonds would already feel this way. Harry had to _think_ of himself as a Lord, someone who could belong to that designation and had the right to command certain things of his vassals.  
  
Like tribute. And obedience.  
  
Harry slowly brought his hand down, and the fire faded away. He turned to face his attacking vassal, who did need some kind of punishment. But Harry would decide on what that was, and how much.  
  
He had really been in control all along. He had wanted to stop Blaise from striking at him back in the Forbidden Forest, and that was what had happened. If hurting him wasn’t exactly the way he had planned to do it, well, he should have been more specific.  
  
He knelt down next to Blaise, and rolled him over. He was limp, and came easily. He felt thin, and Harry remembered that he’d been in Hogwarts during the war. Well, he wouldn’t have eaten any better than Harry.  
  
Blaise was still breathing, and that was about all that could be said for him. His face was seamed with burns, and his arms, except where the bond mark glittered like true metal. Harry sighed. He didn’t want to look at Blaise’s legs, because he knew he would see the same.  
  
He gripped the bond again, weaving it around and around Blaise, and told it, _I want him healed._  
  
There was another brief fit, but it crashed against and washed down the wall of Harry’s resistance. No, he was _not_ going to let the bond do as it wanted. He had to be master? Then he would be master. He had failed in the holding cell to be transported to his vassals’ sides because he had still been shying away from and shirking his responsibility, not wanting to force anyone to do anything, even if it was by an intangible bond.  
  
Now he had changed, and he snarled his will down the bond, and it wrapped around Blaise again. The shield mark glittered until it was hard to look at, and the silvery light reached out and tentatively cocooned Blaise. Harry had to put his hand over his eyes. Just because he was Lord here didn’t mean he was immune to the effects of bright light.  
  
A second later, the cocoon gaped, and gasped, and was gone. Harry heard a sound like ringing silver coins as the magic expired. The shield mark on Blaise’s arm looked dim now, more tarnished than it had before.  
  
But the burns were healed, bar one on the cheek that Harry suspected might be beyond even the bond’s healing powers. Blaise’s face had been closest to him when the bond reacted with fire.  
  
In the silence, Harry plucked the knife from Blaise’s hand and threw it away into the corner of the kitchen. The little ringing noise _that_ made seemed to wake the rest of his vassals from their watching trance.  
  
“I thought you’d killed him,” Pansy whispered.  
  
Harry glanced at her, and remembered in time not to let the full force of his commitment to being a Lord come through his gaze. It was the bond he’d had to convince, not Pansy, who from the beginning had been more supportive of him than he’d had any right to expect. “No. I commanded the bond to reverse the damage. It’s about accepting it, at least enough to make it do what I want, instead of fighting it.”  
  
He snapped his fingers, and Blaise’s body swayed into the air. It wasn’t a very steady progression, but Harry trusted the magic not to hurt Blaise, the way he had trusted the bond to imprison Draco and move him aside this morning instead of hurting him, and he didn’t think he should carry Blaise right now.  
  
“What are you going to do with him?” That was Draco, whispering as if he assumed he would earn Harry’s wrath for himself if he talked into a different tone of voice.  
  
This time, the bond was apparently in Harry’s face as he looked at Draco, who flinched and lowered his eyes. Harry sighed. Draco’s shield mark was already burning, from the way he rubbed it. Harry would do his best to keep that from happening, but his control wasn’t perfect, and both he and they would have to stop blaming him for that.  
  
“I’m going to take him to the library, and _talk_ to him,” Harry said firmly. “He’s been acting like this for a reason, and I haven’t bothered to find out why. Either the bond has no effect on him, not the way it should, or it’s a murderous effect. And I’m his Lord. I’m responsible for what happens to him.”  
  
“You were not acting like his Lord.” Severus considered him from what he seemed to have judged to be a safe distance, the other side of the kitchen table. “Why now?”  
  
Harry swallowed. “Because I can’t make the bond do what I want by fighting it,” he said. “I can only take responsibility and hope that works. Maybe it’ll make me able to break the bond and free him—him, and the rest of you, whoever wants to be freed—and maybe it won’t, but either way, going on as we were is going to result in his death.”  
  
Severus nodded, eyes so hooded that Harry couldn’t tell what was going on in them. Maybe he could have if he concentrated on the bond, but right now, he was tired and the bond was tired, limp and catatonic between him and everyone else but Blaise.  
  
He needed to concentrate on Blaise until he figured out what to do about him. Or until he woke up and talked of his own free will.  
  
He floated Blaise in front of him down the corridor and into the first library he came to. He didn’t want to try going upstairs with his control so weak. Besides, Greg was probably still up there, and Harry didn’t want to boot him out.  
  
He laid Blaise on the couch, called Kreacher to bring some blankets and pillows to make it more comfortable, and settled in to wait. He supposed he could call on the bond to wake Blaise up, too, but frankly, he was just damn tired. A little rest of his own wouldn’t be a bad idea.  
  
*  
  
“Did you see him?”  
  
That was Pansy, speaking in awed tones. Draco stared at her. What was she on about? Of course they had all seen what happened to Blaise, and the only miracle was that it wasn’t worse. Even if he had been surrounded by that silver cocoon that then cracked, Draco had seen a few burns left.  
  
It made him shiver and want to retreat. What if he displeased Potter like that, and he reacted with fire? It wasn’t like Draco was one of the ancient wizards who had _chosen_ a bond with someone powerful, because he deemed the protection worth the risk of his protector getting angry with him.  
  
“Young Master Zabini does seem chastised,” Professor Snape said, his drawl at its most arrogant. “Though it is hard to tell when he is not awake.”  
  
But Pansy was shaking her head impatiently. Draco had seen her look like that right before she gave up trying to tutor Greg in Arithmancy. And Vincent, too, but Draco wasn’t going to think about Vince right now. “No. I meant our Lord. Did you see the way he looked? The look in his eyes?”  
  
“I didn’t see anything special about his eyes,” Draco said, and frowned when Pansy shook her head at him, too. Well, he _hadn’t,_ and for Pansy to act as if that made him stupid was a little hard to bear.  
  
“They didn’t glow, or anything.” Pansy paced a single step, then flopped back into her chair at the table, as if disheartened that they hadn’t seen the same thing she’d noticed. “They just—he looked like a Lord. That’s the way I’ve seen my parents look sometimes, when they were thinking of a threat to the family.”  
  
“He can’t be my parents,” Draco snapped, his hostility flaring up again. Maybe he could get along all right with Potter over a few things, but if Potter attempted to take his father’s place, then Draco would snap.  
  
“That’s not what I meant.” Pansy was quiet, and Draco thought she probably wanted to abandon the conversation, but then she sat up. “Look. What made some of the old wizarding families want to give up their freedom for the sake of protection?”  
  
“Weakness,” Draco said at once. It was the answer anyone familiar with the history of Lordship bonds could give. “They couldn’t stand on their own, so they found someone who could, and clung to them.”  
  
Pansy sighed. “Yes, but it was more than that. Some of them made bargains for a different kind of freedom, or became vassals because it would place them in a situation that was restricted but still better than what they’d been living under. And sometimes someone just wanted to be close to a powerful wizard.”  
  
“To manipulate them?” Draco frowned. He didn’t know what she was getting at.  
  
“To be the presence of power and honor,” Pansy said. “That’s what one of the stories my mother told me said. To be able to catch their breaths, and admire beauty instead of having to steal it for themselves.” She shrugged. “The way Potter’s eyes looked just now, it reminded me of that story.”  
  
Draco said nothing. Professor Snape said nothing. From the look on Professor Snape’s face, Draco thought he was just barely restraining a sneer of contempt, and that only because the bond might punish him if he didn’t.  
  
Draco, though…  
  
If that was real, he wondered what those old wizards had felt for their families. Draco had always been taught that his family was the most important thing, the center of his world, and if he didn’t fight for and defend the Malfoys, then he was nothing. Blood traitors were even worse; they had abandoned their whole culture, or sometimes their obligation to produce children for the family, by tolerating Muggles and marrying Muggleborns.  
  
But if the kind of beauty Pansy was talking about was real, then Draco could see why they would abandon their families for their Lords. Something like that, something as _grand_ as that, would be worth following.  
  
 _But only if it was real,_ Draco told himself again, and rubbed the silvery shield mark. It felt metallic against his fingers right now, not warm. He had no idea what that meant. He had no idea about this bond, or what it really meant, or where it was really going.  
  
And he didn’t believe that Potter could simply become a Lord, or decide to be one, overnight. That did not happen.  
  
*  
  
Blaise stirred slowly. He knew he would feel pain, and grimaced when his cheek scorched at him. But he knew, at the same time, that it was a lot less than he _should_ have felt. He reached his hand up to investigate the matter.  
  
A hand caught his. Blaise froze. He knew the touch of everyone he allowed to touch him, and that wasn’t one of them. Besides, the bond mark on his arm almost sang in response, and that narrowed the possibilities down to one.  
  
“That was the one mark I couldn’t heal,” Potter’s voice said, quietly. “I think it’ll heal on its own if you leave it alone. But I’ll ask Severus to make some burn paste as soon as possible, so that you can heal faster.”  
  
Blaise dropped his hand back to the couch with exquisite slowness. Yes, he had attacked Potter, and there had been the rush of pain up through his shield mark that had consumed him, faster this time. _More_ this time than the magic that had almost killed him in the Forest. Blaise shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself.  
  
He should be dead. And he knew that Potter couldn’t cast ordinary healing spells, one of the facts that had been in the papers about him during the war as part of a list of traits to help people identify him. Besides, Potter didn’t have a wand, anyway.  
  
“How did you heal me?” he asked, without opening his eyes.  
  
Potter was silent for a long time. Blaise listened to the crackle of the fire that must be lit in a nearby hearth, and found it orange in his mind. Potter, when he finally spoke, had an old, dusty blue tone in his voice.  
  
“I was trying to manipulate the bond, or find a way to do it, that would keep Greg as my vassal but free you. And then you were burned, and I knew I didn’t want you to die. So I took control of the bond. I probably could have done it all along, but I had to _want_ to do it.” Blaise heard him pause. “I had to want to do it more than I wanted to stay free of the responsibility.”  
  
Blaise nodded against the couch. He didn’t want to say anything. He didn’t want to acknowledge that Potter was the reason he was still alive, this time, and not just the reason he hurt. No, the reason he _didn’t_ hurt.  
  
But he had to acknowledge, finally, that trying to kill Potter wouldn’t work. He had done it twice. He probably wouldn’t survive a third time. Potter wouldn’t want Blaise to live then, he couldn’t, and it sounded as though Potter’s unconscious desires influenced the bond much more than his conscious wishes.  
  
Blaise had to make Potter sympathetic to him—both so that he could survive and so that he had the chance of getting out of the bond. Potter hadn’t had to heal him. He hadn’t had to listen. He was offering the opportunity to do it now.   
  
Blaise swallowed and sat up. “Do you want to know why I want out of the bond so badly?” he asked.  
  
Potter’s nod was choppy but decisive. “The others don’t like it, and I know that some of them were pretty desperate at first, but they’ve adapted better than you have. So have I. I thought the bond was supposed to readjust memories and do anything else that it needed to make itself acceptable to its victims.”  
  
Blaise curled his lip. “Victims. A cute way to put it.”  
  
“But accurate where you’re concerned.” Potter brushed his fingers over the silver shield mark on his arm, but never took his eyes from Blaise. “It would be, wouldn’t it? You never wanted something like this to happen, you never expected it, and you would rather take the chance with the Ministry arresting you than stay with me a minute longer.”  
  
Blaise forced his shoulders to relax. Potter wasn’t reading his mind. Blaise never would have been able to attack him if he could. He was reading Blaise’s emotions through the bond instead, and since Blaise hadn’t been shy about speaking his opinions, Potter could attach them easily to his words.  
  
“Yes,” he said. “Listen.”  
  
Potter nodded once, his hand still on his shield mark. Blaise didn’t think he was going to use it to inflict pain, or even to remind Blaise who was Lord here and who was vassal. He wanted to touch it and remind _himself_ what responsibilities he had here, what it meant that he and Blaise were bound in this stupid relationship.  
  
As long as it lasted. Blaise tried to keep his skin from crawling at the thought, and looked into the fire. It made an easier audience to address than Potter did.  
  
“My mother knew that I would need strength,” he said. “She told me that I couldn’t ever be seen as weak. I’m not from a prominent pure-blood family. I carry my father’s name, but my mother’s had a string of other husbands, all of whom thought they could take advantage of the fact that _she_ was a bastard daughter of a pure-blood Italian Lord who never acknowledged her.”  
  
“A Lord like me?” Potter’s voice was soft. Blaise found it hard to tell if it was incredulous. The mark on his arm remained tarnished and dull.  
  
“Yes,” Blaise said, and kept staring into the fire. He thought he might see pity on Potter’s face if he looked up, and at that point, he _wouldn’t_ be held responsible for what he chose to do if he saw that. “He was too preoccupied with his vassals to care about her. But she was pure-blood, and she chose to climb to the top of the ranks with her magic and her poisons and her skills in seduction. She wanted to spare me some of the work. If I was strong from the beginning, she taught me, or even if I only looked strong, then no one would challenge me.”  
  
“Did you follow Draco because of that?” Potter asked quietly. “Because he was the stronger, and it was no use trying to challenge him? Or was him not being as strong as he should be part of the reason you always seemed to stand apart from him?”  
  
Blaise stared at Potter. He couldn’t help it, even though staring was both hard for him right now and probably impolite. He hadn’t thought that someone so involved in both Gryffindor and saving the world had noticed any of the internal politics of other Houses.  
  
“Did the bond tell you that?” he finally asked, falling back on the most likely scenario.  
  
“I don’t think so,” Potter said simply, leaning back and studying Blaise. His fingers remained resting on the shield mark, even though he had shifted his other hand to lie on his knee. He looked very plain, and stronger than Blaise remembered. “I think it’s just reminding me of things I saw but didn’t understand at the time.” He paused, then urged in a low voice, “So which one was it?”  
  
Blaise returned to the fire. Yes, some things were too strange to talk about while staring into someone’s eyes. “Draco’s _family_ was too strong for me to challenge directly, and a challenge that I failed would make me look worse than pretending to defer to him. So I did what had to be done when I couldn’t escape being noticed, and established myself as independent the rest of the time.  
  
“It—I’ve always been strong, Potter.” He could remember that, remember the way his mother looked at him, her approving little nod when Blaise told her what he had done at Hogwarts. “I’ve always been stronger than anyone else noticed or knew about. But it was a quiet strength, and the only one who needed to approve of it was my mother. I would have had my own life when the war ended. I went along with the Death Eaters and pretended to do what they wanted.”  
  
“So you wouldn’t be noticed or cursed,” Potter whispered. “Because what mattered was the future and what you would be able to do in it, not what you believed right then or some kind of heroic last stand.”  
  
Blaise snapped his mouth shut. His cheeks burned. He rubbed at them, and was just glad that it wasn’t the shield mark.  
  
“Other people did that, too,” Potter said, and his voice was still softer. “I think Pansy did, and Draco talked a good game but he was scared out of his mind. What makes it so different for you? Why could they acclimate to the bond, but you can’t?”  
  
Blaise had to laugh. “You think that Draco’s _acclimated_ to the bond?”  
  
“He’s been doing better than you have.”  
  
Blaise had to nod, and then he shut his eyes. This next thing was going to be the hardest thing to confess. He would have to do the best he could and hope that was enough.   
  
It probably would be, for Potter. It was himself that Blaise dreaded, and all the memories of his mother’s voice that circled in his head. Over the years, he had disappointed her enough that he knew what she would say about every aspect of every situation. And he knew—he knew what she would say about this.  
  
He grimaced and forced the words out between his teeth. His mother wasn’t here to shield him, as she had warned him time and again that she wouldn’t be. He was on his own.  
  
“His parents asked for your protection, and decided that it was all right for Draco to follow you. My mother didn’t. She’ll be—disappointed in me. She’ll be upset that I was so weak as to get bonded in the first place and not get out of it, and then she’ll be angry because I tried to kill you and failed.”  
  
“She would want you to go along with me?” Potter sounded baffled.  
  
Blaise opened his eyes and shook his head. “No, she would want me free. She doesn’t like Lords any more than I do—she has more reason.” Potter nodded instead of arguing with that, luckily. “She would think that I should have killed you, but found a way to do it that _worked._ That I should have been strong, and not got caught. That I can’t be weak.”  
  
Now. There it was, out of him, the whole stinking mess, the pus from the wound. Blaise sat there and wondered what Potter would say in response.  
  
“You’re not weak.”  
  
Blaise opened his eyes again. “You have a different definition of weakness than I do,” he blurted, before he could take it back. His mother’s voice sighed in the back of his head. _Blaise. Keep calm. Retort only with words that will actually hurt, not with ones that could make you bleed to death. I did not raise a son who would do that.  
_  
“I suspect that’s true,” Potter said. “But I mean that you couldn’t escape from this bond any more than I could. I’m more magically powerful than you are right now, and empowered by law to take care of you. And I’ll free you as soon as I can, as soon as I manage to make the bond—flex around you, instead of reacting to my emotions, or be so stiff that feeling responsible for other people means that I have to be responsible for you, too. If your mother comes to you, or firecalls you, or owls you, then I’ll tell her so, too. And I’ll keep you safe from her if you want me to do that.”  
  
Blaise opened his mouth, and then stood up and stalked away from the library. Potter had done a good enough job of healing him that his muscles didn’t even feel stiff.  
  
He was shaking, and if he stayed in the library a moment longer, he knew he would cry out that Potter didn’t _understand,_ that Blaise would never want or need protection from his own mother, because everything she did to and for him was just trying to provide him with the ability to stand on his own—  
  
Or he would weep, and start thinking that Potter was right.  
  
And Blaise wasn’t sure which one would be worse.


	25. Moving Very Fast

  
Harry woke up with a gasp. He had actually spent a peaceful day yesterday afternoon and evening, with most of his vassals—except Greg—avoiding him and appearing for a few hours here and there. He had eaten dinner with Snape, talked to Draco a little about books in the library, and turned down Greg’s offer to stand guard outside his door. Greg appeared to think that Blaise would try to kill him again, now that he had tried twice.  
  
He’d also leaned into Harry’s bedroom just as Harry was getting ready to close the door, and punched a fist into one palm, looking wistfully at Harry. “You don’t want me to beat Zabini up?”  
  
“Did you call him Zabini when we were at Hogwarts?” Harry had to ask. He had a morbid fascination with how many friendships in Slytherin House he was breaking up. He had already noticed that the two green dots on the shield that represented Draco and Blaise had pulled as far apart as possible.  
  
“Yeah,” Greg said, and stared at him, waiting for what he seemed to think was the conclusion of a joke.  
  
Harry had dismissed him with a word of thanks and a weary wave, and Greg had shut the door and gone to bed. Harry waited until he was sure Greg was asleep. The contented thrumming of the bond through his dot really didn’t do anything more than deepen a little. Then again, Greg seemed happy most of the time.  
  
But now…  
  
Now, something was hammering at the wards as though a flight of dragons was out there, and desperate to get in.  
  
Harry turned to the bond, his only defense at the moment, and twisted his magic through and around his vassals. Greg was still asleep, maybe because he’d chosen a room that was pretty deep inside the house and insulated from the wards, but Draco and Snape were certainly awake, and Pansy was getting there. Blaise was awake, he thought, and not moving.  
  
 _Good._ Harry wanted to be the one to face this danger first. Pulse pounding, he raced to his door and flung it open.  
  
Snape stood there, lifting one eyebrow and his stolen wand at the same time.  
  
Harry winced a little. “Yeah, well,” he muttered.  
  
“You will be most effective if you have someone at your side with a wand,” Snape murmured. That rebuke only, and nothing else, because another blow made the wards shudder as though a giant was thumping on the roof.  
  
Snape tilted his head back so that he was regarding the ceiling, and added, in a tone that hadn’t changed much in inflection, “I find myself wondering exactly who yearns to get in.”  
  
“Let’s go give them a nasty surprise,” Harry said, and pushed past Snape. Snape’s footsteps were right behind him on the stairs, and Harry heard a door open once, then close. Draco, from the feeling of the bond swaying in his mind like a spring breeze. He’d apparently decided to stay in his room.  
  
 _Wise._ Harry kind of wished he could have decided the same. He was tired after reading old books all day. But while he thought the wards of Grimmauld Place might hold up against the intruders without help, he wasn’t sure.   
  
He looked out through one of the windows that faced the street, but couldn’t see anything. Then Snape said something softly behind him, a spell Harry had never learned, and one of the walls became transparent. Harry nearly yelped before he shot out a hand and realized the wall was still there, just easy to see through.  
  
“I would  _not_ expose us so,” Snape said.  
  
Harry winced. There was a little burn through the bond, and he reckoned Snape was—hurt. Hurt that Harry distrusted him, apparently.  
  
Harry didn’t have time for anything other than an apologetic smile right now; he was too busy looking for yet another sign of their enemy. Finally he located a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye, and looked up, as he should have before now, being a Quidditch player and all.  
  
Several brooms hovered above the streets, with just here and there a sparkle of charms meant to keep Muggles from noticing them. Harry stared, then shook his head. The Muggles wouldn’t wake to the noise of the wards shuddering, since they couldn’t feel magic and weren’t connected to them like Harry was, but they could wake up to spells being fired. Someone was taking an awful risk.  
  
Then one of the brooms swooped lower and a hood fell back, and Harry recognized Healer Kislik. Behind her was a thick, tall man who sat his broom as easily as if he rode plunging dragons all the time, and his attention fixed on the house with a brooding frown.  
  
“Potter!” Kislik called. “Come out, Potter, who calls himself a Lord and holds helpless slaves, and negotiate!”  
  
“Yeah, they’re pounding on the wards and they want me to  _negotiate_ ,” Harry muttered, and drew back a second to think. He had no idea if the Ministry would respond fast enough to the attack, but they still had to be told, he decided. Otherwise, they might blame his vassals later for not saying enough, and that was  _not_ on.  
  
“Firecall the Ministry,” he said over his shoulder, where he could feel that Pansy had come down the stairs and was standing silently waiting for orders. “Whoever you can get through to, it doesn’t matter. Tell them to get Auror Stone and that Harry Potter is under attack.”  
  
She didn’t argue, the way Draco or Blaise certainly would have. She vanished, and Snape shifted behind Harry, drawing his attention back to him.  
  
“May I suggest a few spells?” Snape murmured.  
  
Harry nodded. “You’re the only one who has the strength to cast them right now, though. I don’t think I can convince the bond to mimic actual spell effects unless one of you is directly in danger, and I prefer not to risk that.”  
  
Snape paused as if he hadn’t expected that answer, but went on smoothly a second later. “We need to bring down their brooms, force them to fight on the ground.”  
  
“Can we do that without hurting them?” Harry looked out again. It looked as though Kislik and the others were flying in a similar formation to the one that the Order of the Phoenix had used, that time they brought Harry from Privet Drive to here. They stayed high, circling and dipping down to hurl their spells, but then soaring up again.  
  
They were  _circling…_  
  
That might mean they had someone in the center, someone they were protecting.  
  
Snape spoke again before Harry could think about the implications of that. “Only you, Potter, would be concerned about hurting our enemies,” he said dryly.  
  
Harry glared at him. “I’m concerned about what the Ministry and the public will think,” he snapped. “If that’s being overly concerned about things, and worried where I shouldn’t be, then fine. I’ll worry.”  
  
Snape stared at him with his mouth open a little. Then he shut it and gave a tiny bow. “I apologize,” he said. “Restricting it to non-lethal spells, I still think that we can bring them down.”  
  
“Do it, then.” Harry stepped out of the way, and watched as Snape lifted his wand and made a tiny hole in the wards. Harry knew he needed to do that to get any magic at all beyond the line of the house’s defenses, but his spine still prickled and he felt an uncomfortable flush coming up his cheeks. The bond, and part of him, too, hated that his vassals were at all exposed by something like this.  
  
God, he wanted to be armed. Because his wand would make him feel better, because then he could do things like warm his blankets up without asking Snape or Kreacher to do it, but most of all because then he would be able to protect other people who couldn’t protect themselves.  
  
 _I have a saving-people thing, and a Lord thing, but most of all, I think this is just me. It’s just who I am._  
  
Harry half-smiled as he watched Snape aim his wand. That made him feel better, almost as good as having a wand would have. Maybe he could stop thinking about all the changes that the Lordship bond was supposedly making to his mind, and just go with the undeniable truth instead—that guarding people made him feel good. Kislik and all the other wizards who wanted to debate about Lords being evil ought to have fun with  _that_ philosophical problem.  
  
“ _Ventus_ ,” Snape said, so gently that it sounded like a gentle spell, and Harry opened his mouth to ask how  _that_ was going to help get these people off their brooms.  
  
But the air above Kislik and her minions began to shimmer and dance, and then it exploded in a breeze, although they were far enough back from it that Harry could only see it because of the way Kislik’s hood and hair started blowing about. She snatched at her hood, and so did the other people, but the wind was forcing their brooms down. It howled, and Harry could almost see the flat pressure forming above them, driving their brooms nearer and nearer the ground.  
  
“That’s  _wonderful_ ,” Harry said, and only realized how awed he sounded when Snape turned and stared at him.  
  
“Well, it is,” Harry said, because the bond was humming and he didn’t want to take the time to sort out the strangeness. He turned to watching Kislik and the rest.  
  
They were gathering themselves up, and none of them seemed hurt, to Harry’s vast relief. Kislik turned and gestured at the house, and they all turned and drew their wands. They were still standing in a circle, though, and didn’t move closer even when they began casting at the wards of the house.   
  
 _They’re protecting someone,_ Harry thought again, and this time, he was certain. Someone had come along who was important enough to coddle and keep safe. Harry didn’t know why they would want to come so close to battle, but perhaps they hadn’t known what it would be like, or had really wanted to see Harry defeated with their own eyes.  
  
Harry fell back to stand at Snape’s shoulder, although it made his mouth hurt to leave his vassal alone like that. He turned around when he heard footsteps behind him, but it was only Pansy, coming back from the fireplace.  
  
“I left a message with the Auror I think words as the undersecretary for the Department,” Pansy said grimly, shaking a strand of hair out of her mouth. “But I don’t know if she’ll actually take the message in for me, or not.”  
  
“We’ll do what we can,” Harry said, and turned to watch Snape again. He wondered if he should tell Snape to aim for the person in the center of the circle that the others were defending, but that still might end up with someone dead, and his vassals looking like violent Slytherins after all.  
  
Besides, Snape was doing well enough on his own.  
  
Snape moved smoothly through position after position, deflecting curses and shooting through holes in the wards that he sealed right after he used them, always moving to some new position so Kislik and her crew couldn’t fixate on him. He used hexes that would cripple and occupy people, but not curses. Harry suspected that was more because of public relations than because he didn’t want to, but he didn’t care. Snape was holding them at bay.  
  
No one on the other side had cast the spell to make the front of the house transparent, the way Snape had, Harry thought. He wondered if they didn’t know it, or if it was just hard when Stunners and Cutting Hexes and Despair Charms were flying past your head.  
  
Then Kislik leaned over and said something to the hooded figure in the center of the circle, and it nodded. Kislik turned around again. She hadn’t bothered to pull her hood up, and Harry could see every inch and angle of her face. She looked grim, and desperate.  
  
She lifted her wand and started to intone a spell that Harry didn’t recognize. But Pansy’s hand clutched his arm suddenly, and drew his attention away from Kislik.  
  
“You have to stop her.” Pansy’s voice was thin and high, so much so that it took Harry a minute to realize what she was saying, and how urgent it sounded. “She’s going to use Healing magic backwards! You can’t let her do that.”  
  
Harry hesitated a second. He didn’t know if Snape had heard or not. He was still aiming his wand through a hole in the wards, but Harry didn’t think he was aiming it specifically at Kislik.  
  
And really, Snape had handled the whole battle so far. Harry ought to do  _something_ to show that he was worthy of the title of Lord.  
  
Harry stepped forwards and laid his hand on the transparent wall. Kislik and the rest couldn’t see him, of course, but he thought they could hear him well enough. He pitched his voice into a shout.  
  
“What the fuck are you  _doing_?”  
  
Kislik faltered in the middle of her spell, and stared at the house. The hooded figures behind her gave her an urgent shove forwards, but she shook her head and didn’t move, maybe because she had recognized the voice.  
  
Harry heard Pansy clap her hand to her forehead behind him. He didn’t turn around and ask her what she was doing that for, but it was hard.  
  
 _What? She wanted me to stop her, and I stopped her._  
  
Snape was watching him out of the corner of his eye. Harry ignored him and spoke on. He had a few things that he wanted to say to Kislik, anyway. He hoped that she would listen instead of striking immediately again.  
  
“You come here, and you threaten my vassals, and you threaten me. You were probably part of that kidnapping attempt, too, weren’t you? What, is one of those people with you the one who owned the cellar where my vassals were imprisoned?”  
  
It was a totally random guess, but the figure behind Kislik, the one they were all protecting, took a step backwards. Harry smiled, and he was  _glad_ that it felt cruel and nasty and much worse compared to any smile he’d ever given before. Good. He wanted to disrupt them and trample them. Make them suffer the way his vassals had suffered.  
  
Without actually killing them, of course. Part of him would like to, but that would make them too monstrous in the eyes of the Ministry.  
  
“I haven’t done  _anything_ yet,” Harry said. “And you’re doing stupid things. What do you think is going to happen to my vassals if you collapse the roof on their heads? Will they miraculously survive and I won’t, because I’m an evil Lord but they’re innocent?”  
  
There was a long, dead silence, except for the hooded figure whispering furiously to some of the other people with Kislik. Then Kislik stepped forwards and said, “I told you we were part of the Freedom Fighters. I told you what we struggle for. I told you that we would never back down, and never give in.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “Then you were behind the kidnapping, right? You took my vassals to that cellar because it was warded in a way that prevented the Lordship bond from working.” Harry nodded, seeing it now. “You used the Wizengamot lackeys because they wanted to get rid of my vassals for a different reason, and because they could take the blame and keep the heat off you. But you never counted on me coming to rescue them the way I did. You probably wanted to keep us isolated from each other so that you could work on me to let them go.”  
  
There was a deep silence around him, one that seemed to be coming from inside the house as well as outside it. Harry looked around, touching his shield mark as it tingled, and saw both Snape and Pansy staring at him.  
  
“What?” Harry asked. “It’s pretty obvious.” He turned back to Kislik and her crew, but added over his shoulder, “I didn’t figure it out before, but I have all the pieces in front of me now, so I can do that. You’re not the only smart ones here, you know.”  
  
*  
  
Severus shook his head, but was not sure what he could say. What Miss Parkinson had said yesterday had seemed absurd to him—then. That Potter could be any kind of Lord, except the accidental kind that the bond had already made him, was far-fetched.  
  
But now…  
  
Potter was answering back to the Healer and the others, who called themselves Freedom Fighters while not having any way of achieving the freedom they fought for, as if he was to the manor born. He sounded as though having a little knowledge had empowered him to do anything else. He scolded these enemies, mocked them, and told them off for having dared to try to harm “ _his_  vassals.” He even sounded possessive.  
  
Severus did not trust it.  
  
The boy had fought the bond, resisted it, as much as any of them had, and only used it to his advantage to resist murderous attacks on him. If he’d had a wand, Severus thought, he might not have found even that amount of kinship with it. He would have attacked Zabini instead, and turned Draco’s punch back on him.  
  
But Severus watched as Potter fenced with the Healer and her kind, yelling words that called them not real Healers, said they didn’t care about any lives but the ones that would yield to them, and accusing them of idiocy, and it did sound exactly like some of the Lords in the fairy stories his mother had told him.  
  
“Professor Snape?”  
  
Severus started and turned around. Draco might have been there for a long time, but, far-gone in first battle rage and then listening to Potter’s speech, Severus had not noticed him. He shook his head and came over to put a hand on Draco’s shoulder, drawing him back and away. If Draco took it into his head to attack Potter at the moment, Severus would not answer for what would happen.  
  
“What’s going on?” Draco whispered, crowding close to him.  
  
“The Healer who wanted to end the bond in Hogwarts is here,” Severus murmured in response. “She and her followers tried to pull the house down on our heads. I suppose that she was behind the kidnapping from the Ministry holding cells as well, or someone they serve was.”  
  
“Oh.” Draco nibbled his lip, watching the transparent front of the house with big eyes. Severus had been prepared to explain the spell that made it possible to see out, and to say that they were perfectly safe, with no disruptions of the wards, but Draco didn’t seem to need the explanation. He leaned on Severus’s side, as he had sometimes when he was younger and needed reassurance that he was still a good person despite professors telling him otherwise, and watched.  
  
Finally, the Healer seemed to get tired of Potter’s insults, or at least of not responding to them. Severus heard her pick up the chant again, the spell that he knew was reversed Healing magic, and could cause a heart attack, or the hardening of the blood, instead of stopping it. He grimaced and forced himself away from Draco. He was still the only one of them who had a wand, the only one who could face this.  
  
“Wait.”  
  
The force in the word seemed to flow out from the shield mark on Severus’s arm, and force his muscles to fall still. He scowled. He hated the thought that Potter could so easily control him. The others, perhaps, the ones who  _needed_ to be controlled, but not him.  
  
But Potter had his eyes closed, his hands extended in front of him. And he was murmuring, as though he thought he could perform wandless magic.  
  
Severus shook his head. If Potter had had such wandless ability, he would have showed it before now, given the pressures that had been on him. Severus surged up beside him. Reverse Healing magic could potentially pass the wards. He had to stop it.  
  
Then Potter pushed outwards with his hands, and at the same moment, Severus felt the bond ripple and flow.  
  
It seemed as though Potter was struggling with something. He bit his lip, and sweat formed on his brow as he pushed and prodded. His hands kept moving, apparently feeling along an invisible wall of their own making. Now and then, Potter opened his mouth and moved his jaw in silent talk with some interlocutor Severus could not see.  
  
Severus turned his attention out to the Healer and her companions. They were stepping back from the house, their mouths moving, but Severus couldn’t hear them under the sudden pressure and ringing in his ears. He opened his own mouth, but he wasn’t sure that any sound would come out. The air seemed to buck and twitch between his lips, and the shield mark on his arm was the most  _present_ part of his body. It didn’t burn, but it was  _there._ He knew it. He couldn’t treat it as a normal part of his arm anymore.  
  
That made him wary, because since when had he treated it like a normal part of himself?  
  
And then Potter finished pushing, and collapsed to the floor. Severus took a sharp step forwards, but it seemed that Potter wasn’t unconscious. He was breathing deeply, evenly, and he lifted his head a second later and made another pushing gesture with his hands at the front of the house.  
  
Then Severus felt it—something else settling into place behind the wards, strengthening them, and repairing even the slight holes he had made to cast his spells through.  
  
Severus whipped around, staring. He saw the transparent spell he had cast rippling, before it vanished and the façade of the house was there before them again, as though it had never departed. Severus put out a hand, wondering if the wall would feel spongy, the way it had looked to his hand for a second, and yield beneath his fingertips. Nothing happened, though. The sponginess was nonexistent. Severus shook his head and turned back to Potter, tilting the boy’s head up so that he could see him more clearly.  
  
“What did you do?” he demanded. The shield mark on his arm had stopped ringing, but he still knew it was there.  
  
Potter gave him a tired smile and yawned at him.  _Yawned_ at him! Severus could feel his anger building up, but Potter laid his head down and shut his eyes instead of standing up and responding the way he should.   
  
“I did what I should have done when we first came here,” Potter murmured. “I joined the bond to the wards. As long as you’re inside them, you can’t be harmed or taken anywhere. I was trying to make the bond protect the  _house,_ and it wouldn’t do that, because the house isn’t part of the Lordship bond. But I can put it right behind the walls, and make it a shield-bubble around you. So you’re safe now.”  
  
He shut his eyes tighter. “And now I’m going to take a nap.”  
  
Severus looked up. Draco and Pansy were both staring at him and Potter with wide eyes. Pansy shook her head a little. “Is he real?” she asked. “Is he  _allowed_ to be real?”  
  
Severus was spared the need to answer by the whoosh of fire in the drawing room hearth—the Aurors, come too late to help, as they always were.  
  
But his hands shook as he stooped over the body of his Lord, and he was not ashamed to admit it.  
  



	26. Competencies

“Why does no one alert us until it is too late to do anything?”  
  
Severus wanted to roll his eyes when he heard the weary tone in Auror Stone’s voice. She was not the  _only_ one who had put forth intense effort trying to defend them tonight, although Severus had to admit that she had begun her efforts valiantly when she finally arrived. He could still feel the ache in his own fingers that made him bristle when it sounded like someone might be denigrating his sacrifice.  
  
Another one who had sacrificed much was currently asleep on the couch in the drawing room.  
  
Severus grimaced and touched the back of his neck. To tell the truth, he did not understand his own fierce impulse to defend Potter. The bond had made him Potter’s Shield, true, but it did so against other people in the bond, the ones who would hurt him most if they turned treacherously on him. From what Severus could tell, there was no reason that it should now be making him defend Potter against people  _outside_ the bond, and from what was truly mildly-expressed criticism.  
  
But he did not have time to fight the bond and what it wanted for right now. He turned back to Auror Stone and pitched his voice as low as he could. “We called you as soon as we understood what was happening.”  
  
Stone gave him a look that made Severus reconsider reaching for his stolen wand, and not just because it was not a good idea to remind her that he had it. She might look like Umbridge, but it was obvious she was a good deal tougher than that woman had been.   
  
“True enough,” Stone said, after a staring contest. “Well. The fact of the matter is that taking you to the Ministry holding cells wouldn’t be any safer.”  
  
Severus thought he heard a disappointed sigh from Draco, but the boy was currently no threat to Potter, and Severus wasn’t going to spend time glaring at him over a sigh. He pushed the conversation forwards on paths that he thought more productive. “Will the Ministry arrest these Freedom Fighters?”  
  
Stone spread her hands. “We’re still busy cleaning up the aftermath of the war, and partially thanks to your Mr. Potter’s little display in front of the Wizengamot, they’re intent on pushing the Death Eater trials forwards as soon as possible. We’re stretched thin as it is. We’ll look around, but the chance that we’ll find something…”  
  
Severus grimaced. Yes, he was used to such excuses after years of living with Dumbledore, and the Headmaster’s insistence that he couldn’t spend time investigating crimes against Slytherin students because he had too many duties. The fact that it was true made it sting the more.   
  
Pansy cleared her throat. The young woman’s self-possession and clear-headedness were impressing Severus more and more, the more time he spent around her. He wondered if she had had those qualities before the war and he had never noticed them, or if the bond was forcing them all to bloom in unlikely ways. “Can you reassure us that we’ll have some defenses? Wards that are linked to you to tell you when an attack is happening? I know that you probably can’t leave guards with us if you’re stretched so thin.”  
  
She sounded sympathetic. Severus kept the snort from his nose and the sneer from his face with an effort. If this was an effective way to manipulate Stone, then he would allow it. Their biggest defense was in what was close to a magical coma at the moment, and in no shape to aid them.  
  
Stone stared at Pansy for a moment, and then glanced around the drawing room. All of them had assembled there, even Gregory, who had slept through so much of the attack Severus had gone up and roused him. Zabini huddled in a corner, cradling his arm to him as if it were still burned. Draco sat on one of the couches, his eyes huge and drowning in his face. Pansy stood next to Severus, her arms folded.  
  
Greg stood by the door that led into the library where Potter slept. Severus wondered if he had taken up the stance of a guard on accident or on purpose. Or perhaps it was another example of the bond moving them into position based on what it needed them to do, and keeping them from thinking too much about it.  
  
Severus rubbed his forehead. Another thing he did not want to spend too much time thinking about. What was his own mind and what were the thoughts the bond had implanted baffled him too much to spend  _that_ many hours thinking about it.  
  
“The Aurors could link themselves to the wards,” Stone said slowly, looking out the door towards where the five Aurors she had brought with her were investigating. So far, Severus had noticed, they had spent little time outside, even though that would be the place where the attackers’ spells had had the greatest impact. They seemed more interested in casting spells on the portrait frames and the paper, knocking on the walls, and looking around for hidden artifacts or passages. “Someone could be on duty at all times, because we can transfer the link between us. That would allow more than one person to share the burden.”  
  
“Oh.” Pansy cast her eyes down and bit her lip, so much the pretty actress that Severus wanted to applaud again. He kept silent, but it was with some effort. “But I had hoped it would be  _you_ , Auror Stone. How do we know that we can trust the other ones who might take up the burden?”  
  
“You’ll be able to trust them, I promise.” Stone’s face was so grim that Severus wanted to wince. “I don’t intend to put anyone but Aurors I’ve  _personally_ tested with Veritaserum and loyalty spells on this case.”  
  
“All right, then.” Pansy looked down at the floor and twirled a piece of hair around a finger. It made her look more vulnerable and young, Severus thought. She also took great care to keep her sleeves pulled back and her bare left forearm in Auror Stone’s sight at all times. “But you were about to say something else earlier, weren’t you? About leaving someone here with us who wasn’t an Auror.”  
  
Stone clamped her jaw shut, and her nostrils flared. For a moment, Severus thought Pansy had made a mistake. If she was  _too_ noticing and intriguing, then there was the chance that Stone would turn against them. She could be annoyed by a clever Slytherin as well as by a stupid one.  
  
But then Stone shook her head and said, “I’d forget my own wand if it wasn’t in the holster sometimes, I swear. Bernard!”  
  
Another Auror came hurrying into the room. Severus felt a soft current of approval travel through him. In a different way than Stone, this man  _looked_ like an Auror. He had a full dark beard that he kept clipped neatly and tucked out of the way, and his mouth was sternly set above it. His blue eyes scanned the room once, stopping at Severus and Greg and Pansy. He knew the threat each of them represented, Severus thought, and also that Draco and Zabini were no threats at the moment.  
  
“Yes, Madam Stone?” Bernard faced her again a moment later, his hand resting lightly on his wand.  
  
“This is Auror Bernard Ellison,” Stone said to them generally, and faced him. “Bring the Malfoys through.”  
  
“Yes, Madam,” said Ellison, and ducked through the fireplace.  
  
Draco had sat up very straight, and there was a pulse beating in his throat, so fast that Severus thought he could  _see_ the blood that was racing through Draco’s veins. “My—my parents are coming here, Auror Stone?”  
  
She nodded to him. “Yes. There was another attack shortly after midnight. Maybe the same time these Freedom Fighters arrived,” she added thoughtfully. “It didn’t make it past the Aurors I had guarding the cells, but I had the feeling it wasn’t meant to. Just a testing probe, to see our strength. We were too much for them this time, but I’m nearly sure they’ll come back. I thought it best to leave the Malfoys here for right now. The wards of this house ought to hold them, now.”  
  
“Well…” Pansy put in, with a look on her face that Severus could not recognize. “The thing is, our Lord has added an extra protection to the wards for  _us,_ his vassals. I’m not sure that the wards would recognize anyone else. Maybe the Malfoys might not be safe here.”  
  
 _She does not want Draco to rejoin with his parents,_ Severus realized abruptly.  _Perhaps she fears that he might be more troublesome that way._  
  
Severus caught Pansy’s eye, and frowned at her. Pansy blinked and fell still, though she stared at him once before she turned her head so that her fringe hid her face.  
  
Severus did not expect her to understand. Perhaps it  _was_ counter-intuitive. But Draco had started to distrust their Lord in the first place out of fear for his parents, and then had raged that he was not permitted to see them at the Ministry. Finally talking to them again and seeing that they were still alive ought to reassure him, and perhaps make him less of a distraction and drain on Potter’s time and energy.  
  
On  _all_ their time and energy, really, Severus thought, relieved to find that he could still think in a self-interested fashion.  
  
“I am less interested in that than I should be,” Stone said, shaking her head as though she was trying to shake off the clinging slime of Pansy’s words. “I know that I should get Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy under more secure shelter, but this is the most secure we have right now.” She paused, and considered Pansy for a moment. “You understand? I can trust my Aurors, but not the Wizengamot, and not those who work in other Departments of the Ministry, and wish to see the political threat that Potter represents under control. There is only so much I can do.”  
  
Pansy opened her mouth to respond, but Draco interrupted her. “My mum and dad are really coming?  _Here_?”  
  
Stone turned around. Severus grimaced. She had on her face an expression that spoke of no good about to happen for Draco’s childish manner and method of interrupting.  
  
But Stone seemed to pause and swallow the words, and only nodded. “Yes, Mr. Malfoy. They should be here in a few minutes.”  
  
The next second, as if the universe enjoyed proving Stone wrong, the Floo flared. Narcissa came out first, holding up the hem of her robes as if she was a queen entering a properly-swept hall. Severus concealed a smile. The woman had probably worn the same robes since she entered the holding cell, but she looked regal nonetheless.  
  
Lucius followed her. His right arm bore a bandage. Severus studied it for a second, and then nodded. He was no Healer, but he had become expert in the examination of many small wounds when he was among the Death Eaters, usually because the Dark Lord wanted him to experiment with healing potions and see how many of them it would take to close a minor cut or a gushing one.  
  
This one had been properly bandaged, and would do. It was as Severus had thought. The blood-ghost had ensured that it could take some of Lucius’s blood to let Potter track Draco and the rest of them, but it had not killed him. It would  _not_ kill him. It still waited for Draco, and probably always would, until it was destroyed.  
  
“Father. Mother.”  
  
Draco’s voice was strained. Severus could see his hands trembling. He knew that Draco longed to rush to his parents and embrace them, and equally that the code the Malfoys lived by would never condone such a display of emotion.  
  
But Narcissa knelt down on the carpet, smiling at him, and extended her arms. Draco made a muffled noise under his breath and rushed to her after all, throwing his arms around her neck. Lucius drew back as if he feared the feelings would contaminate him, and then sighed and placed one hand on Draco’s shoulder.  
  
“Control yourself,” Severus thought he heard Lucius whisper. “We  _are_ in public.”  
  
Narcissa murmured something back he couldn’t hear. But it seemed to be permission for Draco to be as emotional as he liked, because he lowered his head to his mother’s shoulder and burst into noisy sobs.  
  
Severus cleared his throat and turned to Stone. She nodded once, reading Severus’s intention and silent question before he was aware of it himself, and called the Aurors.  
  
“Secure for tonight,” Ellison said, coming in through the Floo and to a halt before Stone. “I don’t think the attackers will come back so soon, anyway.”  
  
“That was what we thought about the ones at the Ministry, and we were wrong,” Stone snapped at him. Ellison had the grace to flush. Stone turned to Severus. “In the absence of Mr. Potter being conscious at the moment, I am leaving this situation in your capable hands, Professor Snape,” she said.  
  
Severus nodded a little. She was perfectly unhappy with doing so, but she knew that he was the one with the most authority at the moment, and the only one the other Slytherins might obey. “You may count on me, madam.”  
  
“Good,” Stone said. “In the next day, I hope to be able to bring you a timetable of the trials, and whose is scheduled first.” She paused to peer into the room where Potter lay, and Gregory rose on his tiptoes as if he would rush her if she tried to enter. Severus held back a groan. That was the last thing they needed, one of their own attacking an Auror, and perhaps the only Auror in the bunch who had been friendly to them, to boot.  
  
But Stone was smart enough not to push her advantage. She only nodded to Gregory, and to whatever small glimpse of Potter she could catch through the open door into the darkened room, and turned back around. “You’ll want to keep a close eye on him,” she said. “More people than just the Wizengamot want him dead now.”  
  
“What else happened?” Severus asked wearily.  
  
Stone gave him a bland smile. “Somehow, he got access to Rita Skeeter. She’s published an interesting article defending Potter as the youngest in a long line of traditional Lords, and asking why the Ministry wants to burden someone who has already fought for all our lives with the necessity of defending himself again.”  
  
Severus stared at her, but didn’t question her. There was no doubt that it was true, and that this was another boulder launched in to trouble the waters.  _Is there no end to the trouble Potter can make, even locked away in an isolated house with his vassals?_  
  
“We have certain letters for each of you,” Stone continued. Severus thought he saw Zabini perk up out of the corner of his eye, but he had no time to figure out why. “We haven’t gone through the letters yet to make sure that they don’t contain weapons or wands or secret codes. But we’ll send them on as soon as we have.”  
  
Severus half-shook his head, but not in condemnation. “I wonder that you can do as much as you have with so few Aurors, Madam Stone.”  
  
Stone gave him a wry look. “And I wonder the same thing about your Lord, Severus Snape. Well. Keep an eye on him for me.”  
  
Severus nodded soberly back. At least  _someone_ recognized who the adult was here, whether or not she wanted to protect him as intently as Potter did. Stone called her Aurors back and marched through the Floo in the next minute, and the drawing room seemed suddenly much less crowded.  
  
Even with the presence of two new people.  
  
Severus sighed and turned to deal with the next crisis. Until Potter woke, he was essentially in his Lord’s place.  
  
That was, he thought he was, until he saw Pansy advancing busily towards the Malfoys. Severus stayed still, one hand resting lightly on his wand. There was still the chance that Lucius and Narcissa would do something stupid that only Severus or Potter could deal with, but until then, Severus was willing to let Pansy find her own place in the bond.  
  
 _If nothing else, she might spare me enough to let me get some sleep._  
  
*  
  
Pansy saw and knew a lot of things. She saw the lines of weariness in Professor Snape’s face, and knew what they meant. She saw the way Greg stood by the door that led into Potter’s temporary bedroom, and balled his fists up when Mr. Malfoy happened to look his way. She knew what that meant.  
  
And she knew by the tearful shine at the corner of Draco’s eyes and the way he still hadn’t let go of his mum that he was fully occupied with his parents at the moment. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t still be a pain in the arse, but it meant he would be  _less_ of one, at least until one of them did something or told him what to do.  
  
Pansy nodded to Mr. Malfoy, who had glanced up from contemplating his son and wife to pay attention to her. “Good morning, Mr. Malfoy. I suppose that our Lord’s story about the blood-ghost and the price you paid to find Draco was true, then?” It would do them good to be reminded of that first thing. Maybe then Draco would stop this ridiculous defiance against Harry, if he realized that his parents were still whole and healthy and his father had chosen to make the sacrifice on his own.   
  
Draco glanced at her, and buried his face against his mother’s shoulder. Mr. Malfoy smiled a little. “The story was true. Did someone say otherwise?”  
  
“Oh, not in so many words,” Pansy said, and took a little step back as if she was afraid of Mr. Malfoy. In fact, it almost startled her when she realized she wasn’t. She should have been. The Malfoys held more political power than her family, and her mother had warned her that Mr. Malfoy could be a terrible enemy if someone annoyed him enough.  
  
But this was a situation that was different from all the others Pansy had ever been in, and she thought that had something to do with it. She and Draco were both bound to a Lord who was very present, although asleep right now, and Mr. Malfoy wouldn’t be able to forget that he owed that Lord a debt for saving his son.  
  
“Understand,” Pansy continued, in a quick whisper, as if she didn’t want the others to hear, “that we simply had no information on what had happened, since we couldn’t get into the holding cells ourselves. We thought you might have died. That was the price Lord Potter told us that he was willing to pay to get to us.”  
  
Mr. Malfoy frowned once. Draco had tensed in his mother’s arms, and she was trying to soothe him. Pansy widened her eyes innocently. Draco’s parents wouldn’t betray him in public, but Pansy thought he deserved whatever scolding he got in private. He had acted irresponsibly Gryffindor, and silly.  
  
“That would have been a proper price,” Mr. Malfoy said. “He is a Lord. His first loyalty must be to his vassals.”  
  
Pansy nodded vaguely. “That’s true, but we considered it a rather extreme one. We didn’t know why he couldn’t manipulate the bond to find us instead.”  
  
“He is new to the bond,” Mr. Malfoy said dismissively. “That is to be expected.” He turned back to Draco. “In the meantime, I trust that your Lord won’t object if we take rooms upstairs? This house looks to be big enough for all of us.”  
  
Draco cleared his throat. Pansy eyed him. Yes, he was going to be in trouble, and it seemed he was starting to realize it.   
  
“Yes, there are rooms that you can have, Father, Mother,” he said, and finally pulled away from Mrs. Malfoy to turn in the direction of the staircase that led up to the first floor. “Please follow me.”  
  
He took the chance to toss Pansy a murderous glare on the way out. Pansy gave him a smile back, and stepped away in time to catch Professor Snape’s reassuring nod.  
  
Only when she looked around did she realize that Blaise had slipped out of the room in the Malfoys’ wake.  
  
*  
  
“I hope this room will suit you, Father, Mother…”  
  
“It will be fine, Draco.”  
  
Draco turned around, wincing. He still felt an echo of the wild joy that had leaped in him when he saw his parents alive and unharmed, but his mouth was dry with dread, too. It was an effort to lock his legs and stand there in front of his parents instead of running.  
  
“I know that strong magic was used here recently,” his father said, shutting the bedroom door behind him. His mother took a seat halfway between them, watching them both with a cool expression. “I know that you survived because I gave Potter my blood. What else did you do, Draco, to make Parkinson and Severus look at you the way they did?”  
  
Draco took a deep breath. Here it came. The thought that his parents were at least alive to make it come wasn’t very soothing, at the moment.  
  
“I didn’t believe that you were alive,” he admitted softly. “And then Potter was willing to sacrifice you. He didn’t, but he was willing!”  
  
His voice had been rising, he realized only when his father gave him a stern look. Draco ducked his head and mumbled an apology. His lips ached where he had bitten them. He licked them, rubbing the blood away.   
  
“I was willing, too,” his father said.  
  
Draco flinched back.  
  
“I would have made my sacrifice to ensure the continuation of the family line,” his father continued, inexorable. “Potter would have made the sacrifice of your good will to ensure the safety of his vassals. But while my sacrifice would have been a permanent one, had I died, Potter’s should not have been.”  
  
“What else did you do, Draco?” his mother asked quietly. “Besides doubt him?”  
  
 _I might as well go straight to the worst now. They would probably suspect when they saw Potter, anyway._  
  
“I punched him,” he admitted, in a voice barely above a whisper. “On the jaw.”  
  
There was a long silence. He looked up to see his mother looking at his father, and his father looking at him.  
  
Draco flinched and withered away from that look.  
  
“I see that you still have lessons to learn, regarding the challenging of power,” his father said gently. “I will begin to recite them for you now.”   
  
His mother rose to stand behind his father, and Draco rearranged himself in front of them, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed. It was the posture he had been required to adopt whenever Lucius had given him lessons before he went to Hogwarts.  
  
“The survival of the family is the first and foremost duty of any Malfoy…”  
  
Draco hid his next flinch. That was the first lesson he had ever learned. That his father felt the need to repeat it showed how far he thought Draco had fallen.  
  
But on the other hand…  
  
Draco felt a little silver of happiness pierce him.  _At least he’s still alive to say it, and I don’t care who hears me say_ that.  
  
*  
  
Blaise staggered out of the drawing room and up to his own, his legs barely moving, his jaw blazing where the scorch mark from the fire of the bond remained.  
  
Potter had saved all their lives, with such blazing power that Blaise had never seen its like, and reckoned he would never see its like again.  
  
And now the Malfoys were here, and they agreed with Potter, and they would take Blaise’s only possible ally away from him. Blaise himself might fall to Potter’s seductions once he heard Draco agreeing with him.  
  
There was only one solution left.  
  
Alone, Blaise pulled out ink and parchment, and began to compose a letter to his mother.


	27. Sword and Shield

Harry woke warm and comfortable. In fact, he nearly rolled over and went back to sleep. He was in the perfect position, his arms stretched out ahead of him and his legs stretched out towards the foot of the couch he was in. Not even his bed in Gryffindor Tower was always the right size when he wanted to stretch out fully. He was always scraping his fingers on the headboard or his feet on the bottom.  
  
Then he sighed, and realized that he was already fully awake, if he could be having thoughts like that. He rolled over and stretched, bowing his head and rolling his neck. He heard someone shuffle behind him, but they didn’t say anything right away.  
  
“What time is it?” Harry asked, glancing over his shoulder.  
  
Greg stood in the doorway. When he caught Harry’s eye, his mouth melted in a smile, and he came to sit on the couch next to Harry’s and swing his legs. “Almost seven,” he said.  
  
“Night? Morning?” Harry looked around, but this was a room in the interior of the house, and comfortably dim except for the fire crackling on the hearth. It could be almost any time, and this room wouldn’t register the change either way.  
  
“Night,” Greg said. “This is the same day that you—you defeated them in the early morning, and this is the night of that morning.” He sounded anxious to get it right, and Harry felt a soft little tingle from the shield mark on his arm, maybe telling him that Greg was upset.  
  
Harry smiled at him and said, “That’s fine. It tells me just fine.” Greg relaxed, and Harry continued, “Did the Aurors ever come?” He was curious, despite the fact that things were obviously safe and the wards had held. They could make themselves useful by capturing the Freedom Fighters, if not by defending his vassals in more immediate ways.  
  
 _No, that is_ my  _job._  
  
“They came.” Greg sounded eager to tell him, and Harry leaned back on the couch and wondered what he would say next.  _Has everyone managed to function without me?_ “They said the wards were holding. They brought Draco’s parents. They said people had attacked them in the cells.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes briefly. On the one hand, seeing his parents might calm Draco down. On the other hand, he doubted Lucius Malfoy would go along with what Harry wanted even as quietly as Draco had been doing in the last day.  
  
 _More and more challenges. I didn’t sign up for this._  
  
Then again, he hadn’t signed up for anything, including the original bond. He’d wanted to protect people, but he wouldn’t have chosen this way. He’d been thinking more in terms of that Shield Charm he cast.  
  
Harry sighed and opened his eyes. “I’m hungry. Krea—”  
  
“Let me get it!”  
  
Harry stared at Greg, who had bounced to his feet. “Are people sleeping?” he asked. It seemed early for it, but it must have taken a lot out of Snape to cast those spells, and maybe Pansy and Blaise had decided that they might as well sleep.   
  
 _What about Greg?_ It suddenly occurred to Harry that Greg might have remained on guard by him all this time. Had he been able to lie down on the other couch and go to sleep, or had he been too worried about who else would attack Harry?  
  
“Do you want to?” Harry asked, because Greg still stood there with pleading eyes, and Harry doubted he would take being ordered to eat and rest very well right now. “I was just going to call Kreacher, my house-elf. He’s the one who made that food we ate earlier. He can get it for me, no problem.”  
  
“I want to.”  
  
Greg’s response was as dark and heavy as any of the threats that Harry had ever heard him utter at Draco’s orders. He sighed and lay back on the couch. Well, fine. He didn’t have the strength to argue.  
  
“Thanks,” he said, closing his eyes. “I shouldn’t eat much—just some toast and soup for right now, if you would.” He could feel his stomach shifting around, and he grimaced. It had done the same thing sometimes when he was a child and had done accidental magic, although he hadn’t known what it was then. It was just the use of a great deal of power, and the only way to get along with it was ignore it and eat small meals until it went away.  
  
Greg didn’t respond. Harry opened his eyes and found that he was already gone.  
  
*  
  
Greg trotted to the kitchen, feeling as though he had a rod up his spine that was telling him where to turn and how to stand. As though he had someone to lead him and tell him what to do again, the way Draco had in Hogwarts.  
  
He had a _Lord._  
  
He got to the kitchen and called the house-elf, and it appeared. It didn’t seem to like him much. It grunted when he talked to it. But when he asked for soup and toast for Lord Harry, the elf nodded and began to work, and Greg knew it wouldn’t be long before there was a plate of lightly buttered toast and steaming tomato soup. He had said  _tomato_ soup when the elf asked. He thought he remembered his Lord eating that at Hogwarts once. Draco had said something about it matching Weasley’s hair.  
  
Greg leaned on the table, and thought.  
  
It was hard to think about Draco and his Lord at the same time. He had done what Draco ordered, at one time. Now he was doing what his Lord ordered. But his father had obeyed Mr. Malfoy. What would happen if Mr. Malfoy or Draco came down the stairs and ordered him to do something now?  
  
Greg floated around for a second in his head, and then laughed. The elf didn’t look at him, but Greg felt tempted to looked at  _himself._.  
  
It was so beautifully simple. He had a Lord now. He would go and ask his Lord if he should do what Draco or Mr. Malfoy asked him.  
  
Greg smiled. He would have to thank his mum for telling him all those stories about Lords. She had made it clear what she should do in a complicated situation, and she wasn’t even  _here._  
  
Maybe they would let him write to his mum once they finished sorting through all the letters. The Aurors. Maybe they would let his mum come and visit him. Greg would like that, and he didn’t think his Lord would object. His mum had never been a Death Eater. His dad had, but his dad might be in prison by now, so he probably couldn’t come visit anyway.  
  
“This is being for Master Harry,” the elf said in front of him, startling Greg. He looked up and saw the large tray of toast and tomato soup he had asked for. Kreacher let him take it, but he still looked back and forth from Greg to the tray as though he assumed that it was always going to be too heavy for him.  
  
“Thank you,” said Greg back, not because he was in the habit of saying that to house-elves but because he thought his Lord would like him to be, and then walked out of the room with it.  
  
He had a place now. That was even better than having a Lord, really, and certainly better than someone just telling him what to do. He had a place that was valued and made  _sense._ Greg might not ever have thought he would be carrying trays and telling his Lord to lie on the couch and let Greg tend to him, but those things went together beautifully.  
  
 _I like my life._  
  
*  
  
Harry sighed and put the tray aside. He’d had to eat slowly, but it had been delicious. He wondered idly how Greg had known he liked tomato soup. Well, maybe it was something the bond had told him. Not worth worrying about, anyway, not compared to the way Greg was leaning forwards from his seat on the other couch and studying him with anxious eyes.  
  
“What’s the matter?” Harry asked, laying the tray on the floor. Greg twitched as if he would come over and pick it up, but Kreacher appeared before he could. Kreacher glanced at Greg as he vanished, a deep, distrustful look that made Harry want to snicker. He didn’t think Greg had done or said anything awful in the kitchen; rather, Kreacher just didn’t seem to like anyone taking over his position. “Did the Aurors say something to you about your parents when they were here?”  
  
“No,” said Greg. “I’d like permission to write to them, my Lord.”  
  
“You have it.” Harry managed to conceal his wince at the mention of the title. He thought he would have to get used to doing that. Greg seemed to need it more than the others. “I don’t know if the Aurors will let an owl deliver the letters, though.”  
  
“That’s fine,” said Greg. “Writing is what I wanted to do, my Lord.”  
  
Harry frowned. “Then what’s the matter?”  
  
Greg stared at his hands for a second, at the floor for longer, and finally looked up and said, “I need—can you please reassure me that you’re not going to get rid of me, my Lord?”  
  
Harry exhaled slowly.  _Right. I should have remembered that._  
  
Luckily, he had made his decision before he started manipulating the bond to reinforce the wards, and that made it easier to sit up now and nod. “I’m not going to get rid of you,” he added, when Greg’s face made it clear that wasn’t enough. “I think I can stretch the bond around some people and keep it on others. Since you want to stay with me, I’ll make sure that you get to.”  
  
Greg’s face looked so radiantly joyful that Harry shut his mouth on what he wanted to say about urging Greg to have his own personal freedom and independence.  _I reckon this is close to what he would have had, anyway. Draco might have gone on talking to him and telling him what to do even after they grew up._  
  
And now there was something else he could ask Greg, anyway. Harry put aside his tray even further, with a push of his foot, and leaned forwards. “Greg, what can you tell me about the Malfoys?”  
  
He had a moment to wonder if that was the wrong order. Maybe Greg would feel too bad to betray Draco, which Harry was essentially asking him to do, and comment on the manners of Draco’s parents. Maybe Greg didn’t even  _know_ Draco’s parents, although Harry thought that was unlikely.  
  
Greg didn’t protest, though. After a minute of staring into the fire, he turned his head and said, “Mr. Malfoy doesn’t like orders. He wouldn’t be happy that Draco was bonded. But he’s—” Silence, while Greg groped for words and Harry did his best to wait and be patient. Then Greg said, “He sees reality. Sometimes Draco just sees what he wants to. He always thought that you were being mean to him in school when you really weren’t.”  
  
Harry smiled. “Well, sometimes he was right,” he said, thinking about sixth year. “But do you think Mr. Malfoy would try to get Draco out of the bond?”  
  
This time, it was Greg’s turn to give him a long, patient look. “No,” he said. “Because he sees what’s  _there,_ and the bond is what’s there.”  
  
Harry nodded. “So you think that he wouldn’t want me to free Draco from it?”  
  
“If you could,” said Greg. “Maybe. I don’t know him that well.”  
  
Harry came to his rescue, because Greg could get too unhappy. He was starting to wonder if it was just the bond pushing him to see Greg a new way, or other instincts sharpening. In school, he wouldn’t have noticed or cared if Goyle was unhappy. “But as long as the bond is there, he’ll think that he has to deal with it?”  
  
Greg nodded, looking so calm and confident that Harry had to blink.  _He really does bother with someone to tell him what to do._ He wondered what Hermione would say about that, and wished he could know. “He knows that he can’t get rid of the bond. Maybe you’ll do it, and maybe you won’t. But he knows that he has to live with it.”  
  
“Indeed I do, Mr. Potter. I would call you Lord Potter, but I understand that you might not tolerate that from anyone except your vassals.”  
  
Harry turned around rapidly. Lucius Malfoy stood in the doorway of the drawing room, bowing to him. Behind him were Narcissa and Draco, Draco looking pale and scolded. Harry had to smile a little, and wish he could have seen that. He still felt sorry for Draco, and he liked him better than he used to, but Draco had been bloody annoying in the last few days.  
  
“Come in and discuss it, then,” Harry said. He would have asked them to drag in some chairs from the other rooms, but Greg stood up rapidly and came to loom behind Harry’s couch. The Malfoys trooped in and sat down on the couch he’d had, as though this was all perfectly natural. Maybe to them, it was.  
  
Harry had to admit that he was a little pissed. None of them thanked Greg for giving them a seat. Like he was—  
  
 _A house-elf._  
  
Harry scowled harder. Even if they thought about Greg that way, Harry didn’t intend to let them  _treat_ him that way. For now, he’d let it go, because Greg had wanted to do it and it wasn’t a huge thing. But anyone who tried to treat any of his vassals like a servant was going to answer to  _him_.  
  
*  
  
 _What’s Potter so pissed about?_  
  
Draco shook his head. He could feel from the slight, warning burn in his shield mark that Potter was angry about something, but at the moment, he had not the slightest idea what.  
  
His father noticed the headshake, Draco was sure, but he wasn’t privy to enough of Lucius’s plans to know how it might have changed them. Instead, his father bowed his head slightly again and said, “Mr. Potter, what are your intentions regarding us?”  
  
Draco enjoyed watching Potter blink, despite the little flinch and ripple in his shield mark. That was a new one on Potter, having a Malfoy be direct. Draco was sure that was why his father had done it, but it was still fun to watch the effect.  
  
Potter said, “I intend to keep the bond at least through the trials, and make sure that everyone knows insulting or harming you or your wife means getting me angry. Draco is my vassal. You’re not, but I can do my best to give you my protection.” He nodded to Narcissa, who gave Potter the kind of small, cool smile that always made Draco nervous.  
  
Potter didn’t have the sense or the knowledge to be nervous. He was going obliviously on. “When the trials are done, then I can release the bond. Or, at least, I plan to. I still haven’t learned exactly  _how_ to do it, but I know that the bond will do what I want if I work with it instead of trying to reject it. So I’ll release Draco then, and hopefully all of you will be alive. I don’t know about out of Azkaban.”  
  
There was a silence. Draco glanced up at his parents. They’d stood outside the room and eavesdropped on Potter and Greg for a while. Had his father not believed Potter when he said that he would let as many of his vassals go as possible?  
  
“I believe,” said Lucius, his voice very soft, “that would be a mistake.”  
  
“I know Draco wants to be free,” said Potter, and looked at Draco. Draco found himself squirming, lowering his eyes without meaning to. “That matters more to him than any political advantage. So I’m going to let him go. I just have to figure out how to do it.”  
  
Draco stared at Potter, then up at his father. Lucius had turned his head and was watching Draco. His face was calm and accepting—and frightening. That was the look he wore when Draco  _could_ make up his own mind, but would also have to make up his own justification.  
  
Draco took a deep breath and shook his head. “I think you have me confused with Blaise, Potter,” he told him. “He  _does_ want to be free, and he doesn’t care who he has to step on to do it. You could probably release him right now, and he would rather face the trials alone.”  
  
“He would flee the country, is what he would do,” Potter said shortly, and without even pausing to look at the mark on his arm. Draco wondered if the bond was telling Potter things about his vassals that he didn’t know consciously, and swallowed. That was also frightening. “And that’s why I’m keeping  _him_  under the bond until after the trials, too. If he was my only vassal, he could go, but he might make the rest of you look bad, and give them an excuse to come after you even harder than they will now.”  
  
“Harder than they will,” said Narcissa, with a fragility in her voice that made Draco smile in spite of himself. Potter was a fool if he fell for that, but then again, Draco didn’t think his Lord was  _that_ much of a fool. “So there are political disadvantages as well as advantages to being allied with you.”  
  
“Well,  _yeah_ ,” Potter said. “Greg told me about the attack on your cells. And there was the kidnapping Draco and the others went through, and the attack here. It’s probably my fault, because I challenged the Wizengamot.” He turned to Draco. “Maybe you should reconsider whether you want to be bonded to me.”  
  
Draco stared at him for a second, and then looked at his parents for guidance again. His mother sat with her hands folded in her lap. His father hadn’t dropped the cool expression that said, once again, the choice was Draco’s.  
  
 _Bloody wonderful._ Draco turned back and spoke honestly, something that had nearly been trained out of him in the last year with the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord in such close proximity. It probably helped that he was talking to Potter, whom he had honestly insulted many times.   
  
“I think that I’ll still have a better chance with you than I would on my own, right now. I would have some of the same enemies after me if I was free, and others who would consider going after me when they wouldn’t if I was under your protection.” Draco took a deep breath and braced himself for the next thing he had to say. They had discussed strategy, him and his parents, and they had all agreed that it would sound better coming from him, the person Potter already had the impulse to protect. “In fact…can you extend the bond? So that it embraces my parents as well as me?”  
  
Potter stared at him in turn, for long enough that Draco thought he was going to refuse and his parents’ surrender of pride and dignity would be for nothing. Then Potter turned as though Draco had ceased to exist and looked his parents directly in the eye, first one and then the other.  
  
“I sort of despise parents who make their kid speak for them,” Potter said.  
  
Lucius leaned forwards. “You are not a stranger to these games of political power,” he said. “Not the way that Severus tells me you spoke in front of the Wizengamot.”  
  
Draco nodded. They had spent about an hour talking with Professor Snape this afternoon, and Draco had heard all the details about Potter’s exploits in front of the Wizengamot that he hadn’t before. That meant, as far as he was concerned, that Potter could protect them all with words almost as well as with the bond magic.  
  
Potter, though, laughed, not for long but roughly, in a way that made him hoot. For the first time since the conversation began, Draco saw his father start and shift a little, not perfectly balancing his weight.  
  
“You really  _haven’t_ been paying attention if you think I’m some kind of expert at this.” Potter shook his head. “I achieved victories through help and magic. One time the Sorting Hat and Dumbledore’s phoenix helped me. One time it was my mother’s protection. Well, more times than one it was my mother’s protection, really. And I had lots of luck, and I had Dumbledore manipulating behind the scenes to make sure that everything turned out all right.”  
  
Abruptly, he leaned forwards, and his face was hard. “Maybe your lives would be easier if you were my vassals, too. I really don’t know. The thing  _is,_ I’m not the same kind of person you are. I’m not  _good_ at politics. I’m trying, because I have to, but that speech in front of the Wizengamot was just me being honest and angry. Now they’re going to expect that, and I’m not sure I would be that lucky a second time.” He hesitated, and then added, “I’ve been lucky more than once, but usually not in the same way.”  
  
Narcissa leaned back a little on the couch, enough for Draco to see her face past his father’s head. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moving. Draco wondered if she was calculating their newly changed chances.  
  
“I do not care.”  
  
And  _that_ was his father. Draco thought the tendons in his neck creaked, he whipped his head around so fast to stare at Lucius.  
  
“I do not care if it was luck or manipulation or expertise that you do not acknowledge you had,” Lucius repeated, staring into Potter’s eyes. “I know that you survived, that you are alive and the Dark Lord is not. I compromised the family pride and dignity as much as I ever will when I served an insane monster. I would rather serve someone who is looking to help and shield others, and has the help of one of the best Potions masters I know.” He hesitated, then added, “And an unshakable sense of his own mission.”  
  
Draco didn’t really know whether that last statement was meant to be a compliment or not; they were the kind of words his father would sneer over dinner about his opponents in the Ministry. But Potter just nodded, slowly and kind of regally, before standing up from the couch.  
  
“Think more about it,” he said. “Accepting you as vassals under the same bond would be difficult, since we don’t really know much about how this one started or how to duplicate the shield mark on your arms, so it would have to be a different one. Think about it. I’ll take your answer in the morning.  _Your_ answer,” he added, and then smiled at Draco. “I already know yours. Good choice.” And he strode out of the room with Greg following him. Greg gave one look back at Draco, but then turned around and marched after Potter.  
  
Draco blinked and leaned back on the couch. His parents were speaking to each other, those little half-sentences of political negotiation and calculation that Draco found it hard to follow anyway. His parents had known each other too long to explain things to anyone else.  
  
In the meantime…  
  
Draco had his parents back. He had almost had time to get used to that, since they’d been here all day now.  
  
He wondered how long it would take him to get used to the feeling that blazed through him when Potter smiled at him.


	28. Thoughts and Experiences

Blaise came slowly out of his room, hand clenched around his letter. He had rewritten it over and over again, and only snarled at the house-elf who showed up and tried to feed him. It had to be _perfect._ On the one hand, he was asking his mother to come and rescue him; on the other hand, he had to make it sound as though he was strong in asking it, not weak. She would never come and rescue him from something he should have been able to handle on his own.  
  
 _Which is most things, now that you are of age and have had the benefit of her training all your life._  
  
Blaise sighed and shook his head. He wouldn’t begin _that_ useless argument with himself again. He looked around. Of course, now that he _wanted_ the house-elf, the creature wasn’t anywhere around the kitchen.  
  
There was a huge, delicious meal cooling there, though. Blaise went and helped himself to some of what looked like a meat dish decorated with melted cheese. He didn’t know what it was, but he was willing to find out, it looked so good.  
  
“What are you doing now?”  
  
Blaise whirled around. Of course his _Lord_ was there, with Greg behind him. Greg had no expression on his face, but Blaise recognized the way Greg watched him. It was the way he acted if he thought Draco was going to give him an order to beat someone up.  
  
Blaise swallowed and sneered. _Once a guard dog, always a guard dog. It only depends on who’s holding the leash._ “None of your business,” he said. “I was eating. I haven’t eaten all day. I didn’t want to be around people who would all brand me a traitor.”  
  
“Kreacher would have brought you a private meal if you asked,” said Potter. His face was weird, too. It wasn’t true to say that he had learned to hide his emotions, but he was meeting Blaise’s eyes with more fortitude and less passion than he had before.  
  
Blaise didn’t curse aloud. He wasn’t so stupid. But he did incline his head and say, “It’s true that I had something to do. Writing a letter to my family lawyer.” He held up the letter. “He may be able to give us some legal advice. And whatever you think, the laws about what Lords and vassals are supposed to do won’t be the only influence on our trials, once they start.”  
  
Potter cocked his head to the side. Blaise wondered what he was doing. Did he think that he could somehow see through the envelope and find out who the letter had been _really_ addressed to? Of course not. There was no mark on the outside that would reveal that, either. For once, Blaise was glad that they didn’t have wands. Potter couldn’t cast any of the spells that would make it easier for him to find out Blaise’s deception, and that included a Summoning Charm.  
  
Then Potter said softly, “You’re lying. I don’t know who you’re writing to, but it’s not your lawyer.”  
  
Fear prickled all over Blaise’s skin. How had Potter known _that_? He didn’t realize the truth, but this was too close to it.  
  
Then he thought of the way Potter had tilted his head to the side, as though listening to something, and knew. Potter had been listening to the bond, which apparently thought Potter should know when one of his vassals was lying to him.  
  
“Fine,” Blaise spat, too angry to be afraid. “I’m writing to my mother. She’s the only one who understands me and _cares for me,_ instead of turning me into a torture victim. She’ll come and take you away from me.”  
  
“That can’t be,” Potter said. “I gave my word that none of us would leave the house, remember?” He went on before Blaise could retort to that with the contempt it deserved. “But she can come and visit. Given what you told me about her, though, I wonder if you’d really want her here. She could devastate you with a single word, and I think you’ll agree that I would never be able to do that, no matter what happened.”  
  
“You’re an idiot,” Blaise said, and ignored the way that Greg gaped at him. Greg was always gaping at something or other, from a new food the house-elves at Hogwarts tried to a winning chess move. “I need her.”  
  
“Even though she might despise you for not being able to escape on your own?”  
  
Blaise felt his shoulders tremble and tense. He used his anger to drive out the potential pain. He never should have told Potter so much about his mother. He couldn’t remember what had possessed him to do that, anyway. Stupidity, and the bond, which meant the same thing. “Even then.”  
  
Potter considered him with those same unfathomable eyes, then shrugged once. “Kreacher!” he called.  
  
The house-elf popped up, bowing. Blaise wanted to sneer, and would have, except that Greg was watching him. Of course the house-elf obeyed like Potter was his Lord, too, even though it was a _Black_ house-elf and should have despised anyone who wasn’t of pure blood.  
  
“Master Harry Potter is needing something?” the elf mumbled, and then turned and looked at Blaise with disapproval that made him stiffen his spine. His mother never would have wanted him to get into a situation where an inferior being could dismiss him.  
  
“Yes,” said Potter, and pointed to Blaise. “Mr. Zabini needs a letter delivered. None of us can leave the house, due to me giving my word. I’d like you to take it to Mrs. Zabini.”  
  
The house-elf sniffed a little, and held out his hand. Blaise put the letter in it, and then folded his own hands behind his back so that no one could see them shaking.  
  
He thought Potter had already seen, though. And Blaise hated him all the more for that.  
  
“I know you would have wanted Kreacher to deliver the letter,” Potter said, his voice devoid of emotion. “Well, you wouldn’t have got him to without me. He obeys me, as Lord of the house. Not you, as my vassal.”  
  
Blaise felt shame squirming in his stomach, and had to fling something back at Potter. After a moment of groping, he found it. “Are you afraid that when she comes, my mother can overpower you?”  
  
Potter treated it like a genuine question and not the rhetorical one that Blaise had meant it to be, seeming to consider it. Then he shook his head and walked into the kitchen, where he piled some more food on a plate and carried it away upstairs. Greg followed him, turning his head the whole way to keep his attention on Blaise.  
  
Blaise sat down with a little hiss. He knew he could eat, that no one would bother him now. No one probably cared that he was here right now, not with Draco occupied with his parents and Professor Snape Salazar knew where.  
  
But his hunger had vanished. He wondered for a second what he would do if Potter was just _stronger_ than his mother, if there was no way for him to get out of this or be the power that he needed to be to preserve his independence.  
  
Then he shoved those thoughts aside, to languish in the prison they deserved. That would not happen. No one was stronger than his mother. She had told him that often enough, urging Blaise to a position of equality, but not one that would surpass her. Blaise knew he couldn’t. She had survived things in her early childhood that he hadn’t, because she had made a more comfortable life for him, and that meant he couldn’t be as tough.  
  
But damn, he wished she was here, even if it was to look at him with freezing eyes and tell him that he had disappointed her. That would make him feel bad, but not the way being Potter’s slave did.  
  
*  
  
“I have come to give you advice I do not think you will like.”  
  
Severus had waited until he was sure that Potter was done with the food he had fetched up from the kitchen, and done feeding Gregory like a puppy, as well. They both needed enough sustenance not to collapse. Severus disliked dealing with faintness and weakness, even his own.  
  
“What advice is that?” Potter had taken the tray to the library he had eaten in before. He had a book about Lordship bonds open on his lap, and he didn’t close it when Severus came into the room. Reluctantly, Severus approved. Potter had to start showing that none of his vassals could order him around, or it would be a disaster when it came to their trials. But he did at least fix his gaze on Severus.  
  
“To not take the Malfoys into the bond as your vassals,” Severus said, and sat down on the chair in front of Potter.  
  
Gregory shifted, but Potter glanced at him and shook his head, apparently commanding him to hold still. He turned back to Severus. “I hadn’t even decided if I _could_ ,” he said. “I don’t think we could duplicate the accidental structure of the first bond.”  
  
Severus waved a hand. “They could swear to you in some other way, as the traditional prerogative of a Lord, and the usual way to establish a bond. But I do not think even that is a good idea.”  
  
“Tell me why.”  
  
 _Where was this masterful boy in the war? I could have followed him without resentment then._  
  
Then Severus sighed. There was really no time that he would not have resented Harry Potter, he knew, not if he was being honest with himself.   
  
“Because the Malfoys will be a millstone around your neck,” Severus said. “You can come up with mitigating circumstances for most of us. I know Draco will swear under Veritaserum that he did not want to become a Death Eater and only tortured people reluctantly. Gregory likewise—if he did any torture, which I suspect he did not.”  
  
Gregory nodded, but didn’t volunteer anything else. Severus held back a shrug. There were different kinds of Slytherins, and Gregory seemed to have already decided on what kind he wanted to be.   
  
“Parkinson and Zabini were not Marked,” Severus finished. “I can swear that I have acted as a spy for decades, not only out of fear of my life.” He did not say more than that, and was relieved that Potter didn’t, either, although his eyes flashed with what might have been compassion. “But the Malfoys…I know that Lucius was a willing Death Eater for longer than he was frightened of the Dark Lord and wishing to be free. He is also a prison escapee. And Narcissa supported her husband and did other things in protection of her son that I do not think you know about.”  
  
“No,” Potter said. To Severus’s surprise, he did not ask Severus to tell him what Narcissa had done. He gazed at his book instead, smoothing down the cover.  
  
Severus debated opening his mouth, but like Gregory, he thought he knew the best times to be silent. So he was, and Potter finally lifted his gaze from the book and nodded to him.  
  
“I won’t accept them,” he said decisively. “I’m going to work a different kind of deal with Lucius instead. I don’t know about Narcissa yet. It’s weird, but even though I barely saw either of them, I feel like I know Lucius better.”  
  
“He is more predictable,” Severus said. “Narcissa is driven by the needs and emotions of her son more than the needs of the family, while Lucius will always do what he thinks best for the line.”  
  
“Not Draco?” Potter looked at him curiously. “I saw him during the battle acting as though Draco was his first priority.”  
  
“Not in the same way he is to Narcissa,” Severus said. “Lucius, I believe, sincerely loves Draco, but he does it partially because Draco is his heir. He was willing to die to secure Draco’s life and freedom, as you saw. That does not mean that he would try to keep Draco perfectly happy. He values Draco’s life before his happiness.”  
  
“Okay,” Potter said. “That was what I thought, based on some of the things he said to me earlier, and so I’m going to do this. I’ll _guarantee_ that Draco stays my vassal long enough to at least be free of Azkaban, survive the trials, and secure every political advantage. In return, Lucius has to go to prison.”  
  
Severus narrowed his eyes. “As vengeance?”  
  
Potter shook his head. “Because there’s no way I can accept him as my vassal, and I can’t have him plotting against me, either.”  
  
Severus studied Potter for a second. “What made you come to such a sensible decision?” he asked. “You were enough of a Gryffindor in school that I never believed that you would be able to.”  
  
“I’m not in school anymore, am I?” Potter murmured back. “I’m not all-wise. I don’t know what I’ll do about Narcissa. I don’t know if Draco will be happy with this deal, although I think Lucius will, and Draco might rage and fuss and start hating me again. I don’t know if what I did with Zabini was the right thing.”  
  
“What did he do now?” Severus asked.  
  
“He wrote a letter to his mother, and was trying to convince Kreacher to send it. I told Kreacher to take it to Mrs. Zabini.” Potter leaned back in his chair, looking disgusted, although even when he spoke, Severus was not certain why. “I’m tired of running around after him. I’ll have his mother come, and that will occupy him one way or the other. She might even know a way to end the bond. At this point, I’m willing to let Blaise have his way. He’s more of a drain on me than four other vassals put together.”  
  
Severus grunted. He had his own thoughts about the introduction of Mrs. Zabini into the house, but it was true that he could see very little else to do as a way of coping with Zabini. He had too much of his past in him, his past before coming to Hogwarts. Severus had sometimes run afoul of Zabini’s stubbornness when ordering him to do something, but not enough to make him realize what a problem it would be in in a Lordship bond.  
  
“This is a dangerous situation,” Severus said, in a tone that he was not sure that he meant Potter to overhear. “It could become explosive with the introduction of new people. But you know that.”  
  
“I do.” Potter’s voice was soft itself, pointed. “But I need to tend to the needs of my vassals, and I can’t force them to obey me, and I already endured Draco screaming about not having his parents here. I don’t want to go through the same thing with Zabini, not after what he’s done to me.” He turned back to his book. “Did you have any more advice to offer me, sir?”  
  
“That you call me by my first name, as I thought you had already promised to do,” Severus said coolly.  
  
Potter winced and glanced at him. “Sorry. Did you have any more advice to offer me, Severus?”  
  
For the first time that Severus could remember, such a repetition of something he had already said didn’t sound mocking. He sighed and stood, shaking his head. “You should remember that you cannot do everything.”  
  
“And yet people keep expecting me to take on more responsibilities, and telling me that I have to do things or I’m evil, and trying to kill me,” Potter said, his voice as cold as oil suddenly. “I appreciate what you’re saying, but I already know that I _can’t_ do everything. There’s just no end of people _expecting_ me to do it.”  
  
Severus stared at him, and had no idea what to say. He supposed that Potter’s work was rather like his own work as Slytherin Head of House, except that Severus did usually get a holiday from it at certain points, and he was not legally responsible for what his students did unless he ignored certain warning signs.  
  
“What are you going to do about that?” he asked finally.  
  
Potter sighed. “I don’t know yet.”  
  
Severus departed the library, feeling that he would have liked to tell Potter to get some sleep and eat, but he’d slept most of the day, and had food in front of him. What more he should have than that, Severus didn’t know.  
  
*  
  
Harry slammed the book down on his lap when he heard someone pounding on the door below. If that was Mrs. Zabini, then he would send Kreacher to bring her in, and he would fucking deal with her later. He was tired of always starting something, research or a night’s sleep or something else, and having idiots come along to interrupt it.  
  
“Answer the door, Kreacher!” he yelled, and turned back to the book again.  
  
Greg gently cleared his throat. Harry glanced up at once, because while he was getting pretty bloody tired of his vassals needing constant care, Greg hadn’t been actively annoying so far, and for him to ask for anything was unusual. It might mean he needed it all the more because he didn’t ask often.  
  
“Yes?” he asked, when it became obvious that Greg wouldn’t speak without permission.  
  
“I think you need a holiday,” said Greg. “Stop researching. You know how to release some people from the bond and keep others. You need to make the bond flexible.”  
  
“I don’t know how to—”  
  
“You know _how_ ,” Greg said inexorably. “You just don’t know the exact way. It’s like—it’s like writing an essay. You know how to write. It’s just going to take a while to put all the words together. A long time.”  
  
Harry smiled despite himself. “You’re right,” he said, and put the book down. He ought to go to bed, he thought, or find another book that was about Quidditch or fairy tales, and just read it for fun for a little while. He’d had enough with thinking about all sorts of things that just made him more angry and depressed in the end. “I can’t do anything tonight. It’s too late, and I’m still partially exhausted.”  
  
Greg beamed at him and started shepherding Harry towards the door. “You can go to bed,” he said. “I’ll stand guard outside your door for a little while.”  
  
Harry turned back towards Greg. “It has to be for only a little while,” he said. The words had reminded him of something he had nearly forgotten. Honestly, it wasn’t strange that people kept forgetting about Greg and treating him like a house-elf. Harry sometimes did the same thing, he thought about Greg so much as just an extension of Draco. “You need some sleep, too. I know that you woke up early in the morning and you didn’t sleep while you were guarding me.”  
  
“Someone had to guard you, my Lord.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, and then ended up holding up a hand when Greg cracked his knuckles meaningfully. The mark on his arm wasn’t burning, which meant he wasn’t going to get help from the bond. Apparently, it felt a vassal threatening his Lord was perfectly appropriate if it was in the name of getting him to get some sleep. “Fine,” he grumbled, and didn’t even try to hide the way he was sulking. “I don’t know why everyone has to beat up on me like this.”  
  
“Who beat up on you?”  
  
 _Careful with metaphorical language,_ Harry reminded himself. Greg wasn’t stupid, exactly, but also he didn’t always understand it when it was used around him. “I just meant that everyone thinks that they should do whatever they want, but also I should command them with the bond, at the same time. I don’t know what to do.”  
  
“You should command them with the bond, my Lord,” Greg said. And then he thought about it, and added, “If they’re your vassals. Otherwise, they don’t get the bond.”  
  
Harry blinked. It almost sounded as though Greg was jealous. Well, he had known Greg was Slytherin. This was just another way it could manifest, he supposed. “Then I command you, in the name of the bond, to guard my door for an hour,” he said firmly. He could have said, “not longer than an hour,” but he wasn’t sure that Greg would want to listen to that. And anyway an hour was a nice, round space of time. “Then you should go to bed.”  
  
Greg nodded, his face set and serious. “Yes, my Lord.”  
  
Harry turned around again. Despite the way he’d slept almost all day, his bed still sounded good.  
  
Then he heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, and whirled around, his hand falling to the wand that wasn’t there. It occurred to him suddenly that he never had known who’d been at the door, Mrs. Zabini or someone else.  
  
Two figures appeared. For a second, Harry thought he had eyestrain, because the first person he saw was impossible.  
  
And then he began to laugh, and flung himself halfway down the stairs to meet their hugs, because the two people were Ron and Hermione.  
  
Hermione was hugging him hard enough a minute later to make Harry feel as if his spine was going to break. He clung to her, rocked back and forth, and Ron said some gruff things and pounded him on the back, too, wherever he could find a spot in between Hermione’s gripping arms. Harry didn’t need to know what Ron was saying. It was enough that he was saying it.  
  
His friends were here. He could get through some awfulness with them here. He didn’t need to go to bed right away. He felt awake, and full of light. They could help him. They _would_ help him, and not because he was their Lord or they owed him life-debts or they’d had some kind of really complicated relationship with his mother. They were just his friends, and his equals.  
  
He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that.  
  
*  
  
Greg rubbed his arm. His shield mark was burning a little, and he wondered if that meant his Lord was dissatisfied. Maybe Greg shouldn’t have let his friends so close to him before he checked to see if his Lord really wanted them there.  
  
But no, the face that his Lord had as his friend rocked him back and forth was blissful, and his other friend hadn’t even scowled at Greg. He was too occupied with his patting his Lord on the back. He was a Weasley, and Weasleys always scowled at Slytherins. That was amazing.  
  
Greg slowly nodded. No, his Lord needed his friends, and Greg couldn’t be that to him. He knew he had never been Draco’s friend. Draco told him what to do and he did it, and that was okay. Vince hadn’t wanted that, and he had—  
  
Greg turned away from the fire.  
  
But as long as his Lord was still there and he could help him sometimes and his Lord would give him orders sometimes, it was okay.  
  
And the burning vanished.


	29. Slices of Blaise

"You have to tell us everything that happened."  
  
Harry leaned back on his bed and laughed. He and Ron and Hermione were in his bedroom, with Greg on guard by the door. Harry thought it was the best place to escape the bunch of determined Slytherin gossips also known as his vassals. "I think you have more to tell than me! How did you get here? How did you get  _permission_ to be here?"  
  
Ron scowled for the first time since they'd showed up and unfolded something from his pocket. "This was published today."  
  
Harry took it and stared at it. It was a little pamphlet, with what looked like streaks of ink around some of the letters. He could imagine how rapidly it must have come off the press, although the name at the top was one that he didn't recognize. He reckoned Rita Skeeter thought she could earn a more exclusive story right now by staying with him, and analyzing his every action.   
  
 _HARRY POTTER, DEATH EATER'S CONSORT!_  said the headline. Harry sighed. He could see why it had sold a lot of copies. He just had to find out which one he was supposed to be sleeping with now.  
  
"You're not upset?" Ron had been watching him as though he expected the bed to explode.  
  
"There are so  _many_ things to be upset about," Harry muttered, and opened the pamphlet. There was a photograph of him in the middle of the second page, an old one. He thought it might have been taken at the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Yes, there was the lake in the background, and enough water dripped from his hair and onto his shirt to soak a small island.  
  
The words here were harder to make out, even more liberally splashed with ink, and scrawled in a way that made Harry think someone had used a spell to translate handwriting into print--not very successfully. But at least he could make out that he was supposed to be sleeping with Draco.  
  
He snorted in spite of himself. Most of the stories that had circulated for the past few years about his love life had been limited to girls. "Why Malfoy?" he asked, lifting his head.  
  
Ron still eyed Harry as if expecting he would explode, but Hermione answered. "Whoever wrote this--I mean, of course it's not someone named 'Vox Populi'--has an informant in the Ministry. Someone reported that the Malfoys were taken out of their cells and somewhere else. So that caused an explosion of rumors that you were pressuring the Ministry to do that, or maybe they were your vassals, too, and Skeeter's story was inaccurate about how many you had."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. "Of course. The one time she actually writes a story that's mostly real, her own reputation ambushes her."  
  
Hermione smiled and reached out to take his hands. "I told you that he would take it better than you thought he would," she added over her shoulder, to Ron. "He's a little more  _mature_ than just getting upset would imply."  
  
"Maybe not mature, just indifferent," Harry corrected her, although he hated to dim her smile. "I've had too many other things to think about. So I'm sleeping with Malfoy, and his parents are my vassals, and the Ministry decided to grant you permission to come here,  _why_?"  
  
"Because Auror Stone thought you might need us," Ron said. "Said that you were already worn out this morning, with defeating another attack of those Freedom Fighters. If you had to put up with all the Slytherins  _plus_ the people who think that you ought to just hand them over, I'm surprised you're not mental."  
  
Harry tried to punch him in the arm, and only failed because Ron, unfairly, dodged. "Thank you for your stunning tribute to my confidence. I was almost mental. I'm glad that Stone thinks I ought to have some support."  
  
"I think she cares about fair trials, too," Hermione said. "If you're mental by the time you have to testify in front of the Wizengamot to try and clear your vassals, that won't do anyone any good."  
  
Harry snickered in spite of himself, and then nodded. "Let me guess. Besides the pamphlet whipping people up, it'll imply that I only bonded the Slytherins because I wanted to keep my  _lover_ safe. And that will turn people against me who wouldn't give a fuck about how much political power I had. Pure-bloods who think that a Lord's duty to his vassals should be pure."  
  
"Got it in one," Ron said. Hermione looked a little distressed over Harry's language, but said nothing. "And so we're to stay with you for the time being."  
  
Harry exhaled hard and slid back against the pillow. "You don't know how welcome you are. It's been a madhouse here."  
  
"Yeah, I can see that, since  _Goyle_ of all people is your bodyguard." Ron leaned forwards, sprawling on the bed until Harry had to pull his legs up. "How did that happen? Start with that first."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, but obliged. He supposed he would be concerned about that himself if Ron was the one who had become a Lord, although from the inside it felt like the Malfoys and Snape and Blaise were his more vital concerns.   
  
But his best friends couldn't know that if they didn't know about all those other people and their problems, could they?  
  
As he spoke, he saw Hermione take out a piece of parchment and begin scribbling notes, head bowed and hair bobbing so sharply that it scraped on the paper sometimes. She looked up at him once and winked while Ron let his jaw dangle and said just the right admiring or damning or outraged things.  
  
They had faced down Voldemort and prevented the end of the world, once. The three of them. Side by side.  
  
They could do the same thing with seven Slytherins.  
  
*  
  
Pansy had to admit that eavesdropping was a little undignified, compared to what she had been used to and raised to expect. But if her Lord was incautious enough to trust Blaise's future behavior to the arrival of his mother, then Pansy wasn't. Blaise might send her all the letters he liked, and meet with her, but Pansy would still make sure that any plots they might make in the meantime were discovered.  
  
Mrs. Zabini had knocked on the door and been shown in by the house-elf. Kreacher was maintaining a lofty pose that Pansy found odd. It seemed to suggest that the presence, or not, of Mrs. Zabini was a matter of no concern to Kreacher, and thus to his master--because a house-elf wouldn't act so casual around a guest, especially a pure-blood one, otherwise. Mrs. Zabini, or whatever name she wore now, had no expression on her harsh, beautiful face as she walked away from Kreacher and into the drawing room where Blaise waited.  
  
Pansy couldn't cast a spell that would prevent them from detecting her. So she did her best with what her mother had once recommended, to go unnoticed in a large manor house with the presence of enemies around her: settling into a corner, not next to the door but across the corridor from the room she wanted to spy into, and making herself sit so still, in such a comfortable position, that she seemed to sink into the shadows. She breathed gently and convinced herself that she was meant to be there, part of the furniture, part of the house.  
  
Mrs. Zabini had walked past her with less than a glance. Blaise had been too agitated to realize she'd been there at all, Pansy was certain.  
  
She waited, hands clasped in her lap, and focused. The drawing room door stood partially open, and no one else was in this part of the house. Mrs. Zabini could have raised charms against eavesdropping, but when she asked something in a low voice, Pansy could hear Blaise's response. "It's okay. Professor Snape is the only other one in this house who has a wand."  
  
And that made it worth the while not to put charms up.  
  
Pansy raised her eyebrows, once she convinced herself it wouldn't make enough noise to be detected. So Mrs. Zabini didn't fear Professor Snape, or felt that he would favor her cause. Maybe both. Maybe she had enough sense to know that the Professor would have one of the senior positions in the bond, and would approve of Blaise leaving because that meant he would have more peace in the house.  
  
Pansy had to admit that would be her point-of-view, if anyone asked her.  
  
But they still had to listen and know what the plan was hatched between Blaise and his mother.  
  
"I received a very strange letter calling me to your side," Mrs. Zabini began, peering down at Blaise as though he was a little crawling bug that someone had released from its proper place. "A letter that I could nearly not  _believe._ A letter that spoke of bonding, and weakness, and being held and about to be tried." For a few seconds, she was still, and from the way she stood, Pansy couldn't see Blaise at all. Then she moved to the side, with a sweep of her robes that trailed around her like skirts. "Even though he has no Dark Mark on his arms, and there should be no reason for the Ministry to try him as a Death Eater."  
  
Pansy tried to imagine her mother saying similar words to her. She supposed she might. But she would have said them with either restrained passion or an open snarl, not the quiet neutrality that dripped from Mrs. Zabini's words, as though she was reciting facts about Blaise to someone who needed to Heal him.  
  
"I didn't want to be bonded."  
  
It sounded as though Blaise had a cleaver in his chest. He jerked the words out, and then knelt there, panting. His mother walked back towards him. Pansy nearly pulled her head out of the way. But she couldn't see Mrs. Zabini's face, exactly, and the best way she could draw attention to herself was by moving. She held still as the sweep of those long, royal blue robes once again blocked off her sight of Blaise.  
  
It was just...something about their sweep made Pansy want to retreat.  
  
"But it happened, didn't it?" Mrs. Zabini asked. Or not asked. Stated. Pansy thought the words could compete with the heavy curtains and stones of the Black house around them for reality. "It is still real. You did not find a way out of the bond. You did not find a way to make yourself free instead of a slave."  
  
Simple words, really. But Pansy could see little glimpses of Blaise, he was flinching so frantically away from each blow.  
  
"I didn't have a choice." Blaise would have said that loudly in the Slytherin common room, defending a wrong chess move, defending the detention that he'd had with Professor Snape. Here, it came out so soft that Pansy though she wouldn't have known what he'd said if she hadn't heard him say it before.  
  
"There are people who say that," Mrs. Zabini agreed. Her voice was gentle, now. That made it worse. "One of them was my father."  
  
Blaise flinched, bowed, almost pressed his head to the floor. His mother paced away again, and let Pansy see it. Then she turned. Pansy saw her raise a hand as though resting a finger against her lips.   
  
"Of course," she murmured, "strong people also do not cower like this before a scolding they know they deserve. Perhaps I was mistaken in you. Perhaps you are weak after all. It would cause many things to make sense. The letter, for example. Yes. That is an alternate theory. It makes many things real. It is interesting. I wonder that I did not think of it before."  
  
Pansy sat there, glad she was in shadows.  
  
“I don’t—” Blaise said, and then seemed to think better of whatever he had been about to say. He jerked his head down and folded his arms across his chest, shivering. His mother still stood aside, and waited for him to continue the sentence.  
  
 _Walk away,_ Pansy thought in his direction, feeling sorry for Blaise for the first time since this stupid bonding situation had begun.  _There’s nothing you can say that will ever please her, and you ought to have given up on trying to make yourself acceptable to her by now. You_ know  _there’s nothing that can do it.  
  
_ But Blaise didn’t seem to notice the advice, from the way he crouched there, and his mother sighed and repeated, “Perhaps you are weak after all. It concerns me. It means that I have spent many years pouring education into an unworthy vessel, and must start over again with another one, someone  _truly_ strong enough to stand beside me and take on the world. But better to know it now than to allow it to continue. Better to know it in the wake of a war that will give me more room and time to work.”  
  
She paced towards the door, towards Pansy. Pansy once again made herself sit still and thought, determinedly, again and again, that there was no particular reason for Mrs. Zabini to look in her direction.  
  
“Wait.”  
  
Pansy wondered if she was right to see a shadow pass over Mrs. Zabini’s face, and if it was the shadow of a smile or something else. She pivoted on what must have been one heel, but her robes prevented Pansy from actually seeing that. She was graceful that way, too, her robes swishing around her.   
  
“Yes?” Mrs. Zabini asked, in such a gentle and encouraging tone that Pansy wanted to run. She repeated her mother’s advice about staying still to herself. The last thing she wanted was for Mrs. Zabini to find her, even  _more_ than she didn’t want to stand there and watch her rip Blaise apart.  
  
Blaise slowly lifted his head. His face looked like grey porridge, but he whispered, “I—I’ll do it.”  
  
“Do what?” Mrs. Zabini laid a caressing hand on the doorknob. “There are so many things that you have promised me to do, and I am so often disappointed.”  
  
Blaise swallowed, throat bobbing in a way that Pansy wanted to glance away from. “I’ll force a break from this bond,” he said. “N-none of the ways I tried worked so far, but that meant attacking Potter directly. There m-must be something else. Something that wouldn’t irritate the bond but which would get me free.”  
  
“Of course there is,” Mrs. Zabini said, a sharper shade to her voice now than Pansy had heard so far. “You stand in a house full of Dark Arts books. Why do you wait?”  
  
“I didn’t know what I could cast without a wand,” Blaise whispered.  
  
Mrs. Zabini closed her eyes. “There are potions,” she said. “There is a house-elf here—a proper one, the one who delivered the letter to me. House-elves do not like serving masters who are not pure-blood. Did you even  _attempt_ to gain its allegiance, or did you simply throw your hands up in the air and decide that you could do nothing?”  
  
Blaise flinched and tucked himself down. Pansy chewed the end of her hair to keep from calling out to him. Blaise had showed that he recognized power plays and manipulations often enough in Slytherin House. Why couldn’t he see that they were also what his mother was doing to  _him_?  
  
“I didn’t know what to do,” Blaise mumbled. He had lost his spirit now, Pansy thought. Mrs. Zabini would attack him more harshly than ever.  
  
But instead, she moved back towards Blaise and cupped his chin in her hands. “My poor Blaise,” she whispered. “You weren’t used to fighting without someone standing at your side, were you? My poor, poor Blaise.”  
  
It took Pansy a moment to understand the look on Blaise’s face, and how those last words could cut more deeply than open insults. Blaise shut his eyes, and didn’t draw back from his mother’s touch. She would probably speak again if he did. But his face set in a grim, resolved expression that Pansy understood far more than she had in the past.  
  
 _He could manipulate his way through Slytherin House because those games didn’t touch him as deeply. Something that does, he has no idea what to do but attack it desperately, in the hopes of gaining his mother’s approval.  
  
_ That was far more than she had ever really wanted to know about Blaise, but it was also information that might help her Lord, and that had been worth risking herself to get.  
  
“I know that you can’t handle this fight,” Mrs. Zabini went on, using one hand to pet Blaise’s hair. It had a ring on it, Pansy noticed, a single black ring with a round black stone in the center that she didn’t recognize. She wished she had her wand, to cast a charm that would tell her whether it had defensive or offensive spells on it. Mrs. Zabini probably wouldn’t wear jewelry that simply had sentimental value. “But it means a lot to me that you wanted to try. You spoke up, and you made your stand. I will remember that.”  
  
The small slices of Blaise that were flying around at the moment might be invisible, but they created a huge sort of drifted pile, Pansy thought, wincing. Mrs. Zabini turned her head a little, and Pansy froze. She didn’t want to attract attention, she thought, holding her breath, any kind of attention.  
  
“Mother,” Blaise said, and his voice was a pleading thing that even Pansy wouldn’t hesitate to call weak.  
  
“No,” Mrs. Zabini said, and patted his shoulder, straightening up. “I shouldn’t have let you go into the world on your own. I should have come to your side the minute that the list of Slytherins bonded to Lord Potter was published in the paper. My poor boy. You don’t have the spine or the nerves or the courage for this trial.”  
  
And she walked away, Blaise trailing behind her, mute and quiet. Pansy thought that some vibrancy had gone out of him that had always been there, even in the times when he had detention, and sat still.  
  
Mrs. Zabini glided up the corridor with no sign that she’d noticed Pansy, and made for the stairs. Pansy only dared to stir when they were ought of sight, her and Blaise, and then slipped into the room they’d abandoned and clapped her hands, whispering, “Kreacher!”  
  
He appeared immediately, although with his ears and hair on end, body quivering all over in the way that a house-elf did when summoned by someone other than his master. “Mistress Parkinson is  _bad_!” he let her know, though he said it in a whisper, too. He seemed to have picked up on her instinct that this situation was one that demanded quiet.  
  
“I need you to go to Lord Potter and tell him that Mrs. Zabini is here and marching up to see him,” Pansy said. “Now.”  
  
Kreacher stared at her for only a second before vanishing. Pansy leaned back against the wall and sighed. She’d done what she could, and more detailed information would have to wait for a moment when she could talk with Potter face-to-face.  
  
She had done her duty to the bond. She would just have to hope that Potter’s temperament was of the kind that could face Mrs. Zabini.  
  
*  
  
“Master Harry! Master Harry is being  _listening_!”  
  
Harry jerked his head up. He had been starting to nod off; even the burning desire to tell Hermione and Ron everything that had happened was losing its power to keep him awake. But Kreacher’s shout startled him enough that he immediately jerked his head up and paid attention.  
  
Kreacher stood in front of him bristling like an electric nightmare, his ears flattened back and one hand raised as though he was gripping a cord. His other hand  _did_ hold a kitchen knife. Harry shook his head and tried to focus through the mists of tiredness that still wrapped his mind. “What’s happening?”  
  
“Mistress Parkinson is saying that Mistress Zabini is being on her way up here,” Kreacher said, and looked at Harry with eyes that were so wide Harry had to resist the urge to get down on his knees and hug him, warts and all.  
  
Harry grimaced a little. He really hadn’t wanted another challenge tonight. But Hermione was already asking, “Why is she a problem?” at the same moment as Ron was asking, “Who is Mrs. Zabini?”  
  
Hermione gave Ron a condescending stare for that. “She’s Blaise Zabini’s mother, of course,” Hermione said, and turned back to Harry while Ron was muttering that he knew that and he didn’t see why it mattered so much if that was all she was. “She’s coming here? You’re sure?”  
  
“If Pansy’s sure, I’m sure,” Harry said, ignoring their start at the sound of Pansy’s first name. He considered for a second what he could do, then shrugged. His options were limited. He wasn’t going to run away even if there was another way out of this room, and he didn’t have a wand for a duel. So he was going to fall back on what he had done so far, and act like a Lord.  
  
“Hermione.” Something in his voice made her sit up. “Can you cast a Cleaning Charm on me? I haven’t had a chance to take a shower today.”  
  
Hermione wordlessly did it, and Harry sighed as the slight sour smell he’d been aware of but not willing to call attention to vanished. “Thanks,” he said. Just knowing that he had a few people on his side with wands made him feel better. “Now, can you please both stand behind me? One on either side. Arrange yourselves however you want.” He shoved himself off the bed and managed to stand. To his pleasure, he had had enough food and rest that he wasn’t swaying on his feet.  
  
Again Hermione and Ron moved without question, and Harry felt a glow as he looked at them. They weren’t his vassals. They didn’t have to obey. There were just his friends, and that was enough.  
  
He heard Greg’s low voice from outside at that point, and immediately spoke up. He didn’t want Greg trying to face down Mrs. Zabini alone, particularly when Greg didn’t have a wand. “Send her in, Greg.”  
  
There was a pause, and then Greg opened the door, looking so tense that Harry wanted to reach out and touch his arm. They were too far apart, though. “My Lord?” Greg demanded in a low voice. “You want me to—”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “Is Blaise with her?”  
  
Greg nodded, slowly.  
  
Harry raised his voice so anyone outside in the corridor could hear. “Then I will see my vassal, and his mother if she wants to accompany him.”  
  
A sneaky smile darting across Greg’s face told him that he had done the right thing, the  _Lordly_ thing. “Yes, my Lord,” he said, and bowed before he stepped back and announced haughtily, “Two visitors, Lord Potter.”   
  
Harry grinned. Greg might not understand a lot, but he understood Lords' etiquette, and a granted audience was different from just barging in and demanding to see someone.  
  
Blaise followed a tall, stately woman with her hand on her wand. She gave Harry a cool nod. Her face was forbidding.  
  
Harry didn’t care. He was focused on Blaise and the way he stood with his head down, the way that Harry had sometimes stood next to Aunt Petunia when Aunt Petunia stopped to talk with neighbors.  
  
His heart was high in his throat and the anger high in his mind when he looked at Mrs. Zabini and said, “All right. So you’re going to tell me what you want, and you’re going to tell me why you’re frightening my vassal, in thirty seconds, or I’ll have you thrown out.”


	30. Challenges to Strength

Blaise stared at Potter from beneath lowered eyelids. If his mother turned around and looked at him, he had to show her the proper deference, while not cowering. He had only found one expression that really worked for that, in all the years she had spent training him.  
  
She had told him there was more than one, but he would have to discover it for himself. And so far, he had not earned the privilege of more instruction than that.  
  
What was Potter  _doing?_ Even if he didn’t know the reputation that Blaise’s mother had for killing her husbands and establishing herself as a dangerous pure-blood witch, he’d heard Blaise talk about her. And her magic was hanging around her in the kind of visible aura that always made Blaise think of silver lines glowing in the dark of caves. Potter ought to  _know_ that he wouldn’t get away with this.  
  
Yet there he stood, with his friends behind him to provide the kind of honor guard that Greg could never be, and even a slight smile on his face, as if this was some meeting that he had  _invited_ Blaise’s mother to.  
  
Blaise didn’t let his mother see it—he was not stupid, whatever she thought about his weakness—but he made sure that his foot was set behind him in a fold of carpet, pivoted to let him turn and run out of the room right away. It was  _impossible_ that this kind of confrontation could endure for long. He knew that Potter would lose soon. Blaise wanted to be out of the line of fire, in case the bond hurt him when his mother started taking Potter apart.  
  
And yet…  
  
His mother had taught him there was no confidence without power. It was easy to see when someone was bluffing, and that meant there was no true confidence there. Blaise had learned the telltales of lies and bluffs, so well that even his mother had praised his mastery of them, and that with no grudging praise.  
  
So it made him wonder where Potter got the true pride that surrounded him now, the careless discarding of consequences. He shone, and Blaise couldn’t find the point of weakness that his mother would use to begin the attack just by looking at him.  
  
On the other hand, Blaise reminded himself as the shield mark on his arm twinged, that was probably the bond influencing him. And he wasn’t his mother, a fact he had proven over and over again. He was shamefully lacking in guile. If he hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have had to spend so much time training him.  
  
So he waited, unsure of the outcome of the contest, his heart beating so hard that it overruled the frenetic pulse in the shield mark.  
  
*  
  
Mrs. Zabini was taking a long time to respond to his taunt, Harry thought. He didn’t think that was because she didn’t know  _how_ to respond. Probably, she wanted to force Harry into making some kind of false move, or she wanted to see what the long silence would do to Blaise.  
  
Probably the latter, Harry thought. His own mind hardened and cooled, resembling the metal that the shield mark looked like right now. He  _hated_ people who were so sadistic, who would stand there and test you and test you, and then act like it was your own fault when you broke under the pressure.  
  
Snape used to be like that in school. Malfoy. Voldemort, in his more taunting moods. And Aunt Petunia, sometimes.  
  
Harry didn’t have to move. Right now, the tension wasn’t unbearable for him or his friends, and he knew, by the soft pulsing of the shield mark, that it wasn’t for Blaise, either. So he waited, and at last Mrs. Zabini decided that it was time to stop trying to earn the Most Beautiful Statue Award, and spoke.  
  
“You know nothing of the subtleties of Lordship,” she said, in a voice that she made just this edge of sorrowful. “Unless the  _family_  of the one to be bonded agrees, no one can give himself to a Lord or Lady. Blood allegiance comes first, not the chosen allegiance.”  
  
“That can’t be true all the time,” Harry said, and he didn’t need the way Hermione shook her head behind him or Greg shook his head behind Mrs. Zabini to tell him so. “For one thing, that means that accidental bonds like the one that I  _have_ with Blaise would be impossible. And yet no one seems to doubt that this is a true bond. They might want it to go away, but they accept it as real.”  
  
Mrs. Zabini swayed a step closer to him. Harry stared at him. Was this the kind of thing she did to seduce men and make them pay attention to her? If so, he thought her technique needed work. It wouldn’t be effective on many people who weren’t already dazed by lust.  
  
Mrs. Zabini slowly drew her wand and aimed it at him. Harry looked back at her, still. He trusted Ron and Hermione to raise a Shield Charm before any hex could land on him. They might not be up to offensive magic, but Harry thought he’d trained them pretty well in Defense.  
  
“I’ve come to claim my son back,” Mrs. Zabini said back, her voice deepening, dimming. “I would prefer not to hurt you, in case you direct the pain down through the bond and harm my son. But I  _will_ have him.”  
  
Harry chuckled a little. “That you think I would do that tells me how little you know about me. And isn’t the person who knows less the one who’s always at a disadvantage in any conflict?”  
  
Mrs. Zabini didn’t smile the way Harry had half thought she would. “I know nothing about you,” she said. “I would have said that someone like you wouldn’t ever become a Lord, even accidentally. That’s the Gryffindor touch, isn’t it? Freedom for all, and the chance to make your own decisions?” She paused. “Unless you are a Slytherin or a Dark wizard. Then they can cage you up and forget about you.”  
  
Harry yawned a little. “You’re forgetting something,” he said. “I’ve already done a lot to ensure that your son and others can stay free. Calling me a thoughtless Gryffindor and insinuating I wouldn’t do anything to help my vassals doesn’t work with me anymore.”  
  
Mrs. Zabini’s face hardened into a mask. She put her wand away and took a step off to the side, as though the view would be better from that side. Harry turned with her, wondering what she thought she would accomplish by moving that way.  
  
He realized it in a moment. Though the motion had probably only been to get herself into a better position and make herself literally look better, not because it would add much to her words.  
  
“You don’t appreciate what a rare treasure you have in Blaise,” Mrs. Zabini murmured. “How can you? You did not grow up around pure-bloods, and the ones you’ve met have received no classic training. No education in ways that would let them take care of themselves. No lessons in grace and deportment.  _True_ grace, not the false repression of emotion and creation of a stone façade that one sees in people like the Malfoys.”  
  
“Let me guess,” Harry said, and he couldn’t help smiling, although the small, crushed state of Blaise next to him limited his amusement a little. “You’re offering me lessons so that I can measure up to your standards.”  
  
“I’m saying that you do not appreciate a treasure when you see one,” Mrs. Zabini retorted, with no sound of impatience in her voice. “You will never admire what you see in Blaise. You will direct and spend your efforts in other channels, caring for the ones who are more obviously needy. And Blaise will never reach his potential because you will not spare him from the bond. I find that…a concern. A waste.”  
  
Blaise hunched some more, but Harry didn’t need the tingling and trembling of the green dot on his shield mark to tell him the real impact that Mrs. Zabini’s words were having. She was praising Blaise where she had been tearing him down recently, offering him a way to achieve what he most wanted, and telling him that he would never find it with Harry.  
  
She was more skilled as a manipulator and abuser than Aunt Petunia had ever been, maybe more skilled than Snape. Harry could find that admirable, in a cold way.  
  
But not when she was hurting one of his vassals.  
  
“I know that  _you_  don’t value him the way you should,” he said, and felt Mrs. Zabini’s gaze move to him as slowly as a lizard’s. “I know that you tell him he’s weak and defenseless when he’s not. He almost killed himself trying to get away from me, rebelling against me, because he was so worried about what you would think. You haven’t taught him to preserve his life, or to wait for the right moment and then strike, or to bargain, the way that I think most of my other vassals have learned. You’ve taught him that he’s worth nothing if he isn’t strong and independent all the time. And how can anyone be that way?”  
  
Mrs. Zabini rubbed a finger along the black ring she wore. Harry made a mental note not to get too close to her hand. He didn’t know what the ring did, but it looked too much like the Resurrection Stone for comfort.  
  
“I am that way,” Mrs. Zabini said, in a tone so deep and distant that Harry, once again, might have been impressed if he was watching her use it on someone else. “I demand no less from my son and heir.”  
  
“You were always that way?” Harry raised his eyebrows. “When you were a child? When someone ignored you? When  _you_ were learning? When you cared for Blaise as a child?” He shook his head. “You can’t have been. You would have died in disgust at your own weakness before now.”  
  
He turned to Blaise, ignoring the way that Mrs. Zabini had gone coiled and still. “Did she manage to convince you of that? She shouldn’t have.” He paused when he noted the stricken expression on Blaise’s face, and softened his voice. He could almost feel Ron and Hermione pressing against him now, although they still stood a little distance behind, and they reminded him of how lucky he had been. He’d had a hard childhood, sure, but he had  _them,_ too. And he would have been nothing without them. Blaise had had no one but his mother to pour poison into his ears. Harry couldn’t blame him for believing it. “She must have been helpless when she was an infant. And if she hates weakness that much, there was a time when she knew what it was. No one hates something that much unless they do know.”  
  
Blaise stared at him, his breathing soundless, his hands still at his sides.  
  
Mrs. Zabini uncoiled.  
  
And it wasn’t him she reached for. It was Blaise, the black ring glinting on her finger as she brought it around.  
  
Harry didn’t plan the way he reacted. He swung his arm forwards, and it duplicated the arc of Mrs. Zabini’s hand, and even though he was nowhere near as close to Blaise, his shield mark flared, and he spoke in a voice that made the house shake.  
  
“ _Protect him_.”  
  
The bond snapped taut between him and Blaise, and a shield formed in front of Blaise, blue instead of silver, but otherwise a perfect duplicate of the one that Harry and Blaise had on their arms. It rang like a gong as it deflected the arc of Mrs. Zabini’s hand. It shimmered, transparent, and revealed Blaise’s shocked face and Mrs. Zabini’s extremely fierce and focused one. It had ripples running through it as if another blow would crack it, and for all Harry knew, it would.  
  
But it held. It defended. It protected Harry’s vassal.  
  
Mrs. Zabini turned back towards him as if she had planned this, her eyes focused on Harry’s face. She had her hand with the black ring still down at her side, and she rubbed her finger now and then on the band of the ring as if it was about to crack and release a spirit that would help her get past Harry’s shield. She hadn’t made a move to attack it yet, though, Harry noticed. He heard his own breathing as a rasp. He didn’t take his eyes from his enemy.  
  
“The capabilities of the bond are fascinating,” Mrs. Zabini murmured. “But I do not require to be convinced of them. I know what they can do. I grew up with a father who was a Lord. I require that you release my son to me.”  
  
“I require that you realize the bond is still there, and I don’t know how to release him yet,” Harry said. “And I think that he should stay with me throughout the Death Eater trials, anyway. Until then, there’s no saying that someone might not accuse him and get him tried.”  
  
“My son is not a Death Eater.”  
  
Harry sighed. “I know that, but most of the public doesn’t right now.” He nodded to the pamphlet that Ron and Hermione had brought and that he’d left lying on the bed. “If I let Blaise go, he could be hurt by someone who doesn’t dare try to do that right now because it would mean angering me and going up against the bond. Yes, maybe he would be all right. But I’m not willing to take that chance.”  
  
Mrs. Zabini looked back and forth between him and Blaise as though watching a tennis match. Her eyes were half-narrowed. Harry didn’t know what she might try next. He couldn’t have predicted that move with the ring against Blaise.  
  
He waited, and hoped.  
  
Mrs. Zabini sighed delicately and turned to face Blaise. “Do you want to stay with Potter?” she asked. “If you wish to do so, I will not contradict you. I only wish to remind you of the probable origin of that desire.”  
  
Blaise shivered again. He couldn’t remove his eyes from his mother’s face, and Harry didn’t blame him. The way Mrs. Zabini manipulated was unnerving. If one tactic failed, she moved on to the next one, like a predator chasing down prey. If something could tire her and make her back off, Harry hadn’t found it yet.  
  
For now, he could only bite his lip and be silent. Mrs. Zabini sounded as if she was offering Blaise a choice, and while she really wasn’t, Harry would sound bad if he opposed it.  
  
Besides, this was the thing that Blaise claimed to want. That Harry couldn’t release him from the bond right now, and thought it would be a poor idea if he could, was really beside the point. Blaise still had to make the choice.  
  
Blaise stood there, and shivered.  
  
*  
  
The shiver seemed to cut to the heart of him, and Blaise shuddered under it, under the gaze of his mother. And even under the gaze of Potter, who had only seemed threatening before now when he was actually wielding the magic of the bond against Blaise.  
  
 _The probable origin of that desire._  
  
His mother meant the bond would be influencing him, and the desire of being weak and protected, if he remained with Potter. Of course it would be, Blaise thought. He had already changed a lot, or he wouldn’t have let pain and the threats of death stop him, not if he was the actual son his mother had struggled to raise. He would have broken free and stood in triumph on the heights.  
  
Even if they were the heights of death, at least he would have been free.  
  
Now, he had to make a choice with his mum  _watching_ him. Blaise had never done that. He had listened to her encouragement, learned from her lessons, watched her retreating back when he made a mistake and she left him alone to think about what he’d done. But this was new, and his hands twisted in on themselves. He felt as if he had frostbite.  
  
Potter was the one who had forced the choice, he thought resentfully. If he had left well enough alone, then Blaise would have been able to leave with his mother. She could free him from the bond. She had to know  _some_ way. She had studied the magic of struggle and freedom for longer than Blaise had been alive, determined never to be enslaved herself. If he had let her touch him with the ring—  
  
Blaise shuddered and clutched at his head. It felt as though someone was speaking to him, some voice of a person he didn’t know. He had never had that sensation before. It was either the bond, or he was going mad and weak, the way his mother had confirmed.  
  
The voice was saying,  _Potter isn’t the one who forced the choice. She’s the one that told you you had to choose. And she wouldn’t have broken the bond if she touched you with that ring._  
  
Blaise shuddered fretfully and wrapped his arms around himself. No, he didn’t know that. She could have done anything if she had touched him with that ring. He didn’t  _know_. He couldn’t  _say_. He didn’t know how to  _choose_.  
  
The voice vanished. If it had been his own madness, Blaise realized, he was sane again, and free to make the right choice. Free to go with his mother and make sure that she freed him.  
  
He stared down at the shield mark on his arm. It was there, outlined in blue and silver, and it looked as if it would always be there. Maybe the centaurs could have removed it, but that path had been closed to him by their fear of Potter.  
  
Could his mother remove it?  
  
Blaise shivered. If he was honest with himself—and his mother had always said that he shouldn’t be anything else—then he knew that he didn’t know that, either.  
  
He looked up. His mother still watched him, her face unchanging. Blaise knew that his refusal wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t change her, either. She would only say that he was weak, and she had always known it, and walk away.  
  
 _And that wouldn’t distress her? She wouldn’t regret the time she had spent raising a weak son and heir, one who isn’t worthy of being her heir after all?_  
  
Blaise shivered. It was—there was something difficult in the back of his throat and the back of his mind. He cleared the one roughly, hoping that it would help him with the blockage in the other.  
  
She would be distressed because she hadn’t raised him in the right way, and he was choosing weakness over freedom. She would be angry that she had wasted her time with him, and she would turn her back on him and cut him out of her life. She would have to begin the search over again for someone to impart her lessons to, and she would be almost eighteen years behind, since she had thought she could trust the child she bore.  
  
But she wouldn’t feel distress about  _him._  She wouldn’t feel what Blaise knew Narcissa Malfoy would feel if for some reason she was forced to walk away from Draco.  
  
That realization seared him and made him cold inside, and then made him impatient with himself. He had always known the truth, hadn’t he? His mother had reared him in  _strength._ That included the strength to face the harsh reality, or reality in general, whether it was harsh or sweet. If he was weak, he was no use to her, and he couldn’t expect her to mourn someone who had no value to her plans.  
  
But—if he was weak, if he was flawed, if he had failed her anyway—  
  
Then it stood to reason that he would want those things weak people wanted. And one of them was a mother who cared about him as more than an heir, or a potion she had botched in the brewing of.  
  
Blaise stared up at his mother. She gazed back at him, and her eyes were as cold as any mountain slope. She didn’t turn away, though. She didn’t truly know what choice he would make. He still had the weapon of uncertainty.  
  
Blaise closed his eyes. He made the choice as much for his mother as for himself, knowing that she wouldn’t want to be burdened with someone as pathetic as he was, and knowing all the time that she would also think him pathetic for caring about what she thought. He shifted closer to Potter.  
  
“That is a powerful bond, that can so alter my son as to steal him from me.”  
  
Blaise flinched again, and opened his eyes. His mother was watching him with that absolute lack of expression that made him want to curl up and die. But if he did that, then he would never earn her respect, and he stood no chance of coming back to her when the bond was finished and he could please her.  
  
“I know I’m weak,” he whispered to her. “But please, listen. I’m doing this for you, so that you don’t have to be burdened with someone like me. I’ll finish it soon. I’ll be free of the bond, and also able to come back to you. If you still want me,” he added, his voice trailing off, because his mother was poised with one hand on her hip and her hand with the black ring on it held to her lips.  
  
“Why would I want someone like that to stand at my side?” his mother asked. “And that was what I was training you for.”  
  
She’d never said that before, never admitted that someday he might have held that important position. Blaise felt his throat jump. He didn’t know what he could say. He stretched out a hand, but his mother avoided it without seeming to notice him, and nodded distantly to Potter.  
  
“I hope you are happy with your stolen prize,” she said. “Keep in mind that a blade that has snapped in one hand may injure the grip of another.”  
  
And she turned and walked out of his life.  
  
Blaise watched her go. He knew that he could run after her and throw himself at her feet, and in the end, she would take him back—not because she pitied him or truly believed that he was strong, but because she wouldn’t want to lose her investment of time and education. And perhaps, in the end, he could show her that he really did want to serve her and love her and do as she said.  
  
But something held him back. It might have been the bond. It might have been a continuing commitment to the idea that she didn’t deserve to be burdened with someone like him.  
  
It might have been his simple realization that he wanted something more for himself.  
  
She walked down the stairs, and Potter put an arm around his shoulders. Blaise turned and stared at him and his friends. He thought they would say something stupid, something that would make the situation worse. They were Gryffindors. They could hardly help it.  
  
Instead, Potter walked him backwards to the bed and said, “Here. Rest. I’ll sleep somewhere else for tonight.”  
  
“Wait!” Blaise sat up, his heart pounding furiously. “I can’t—I can’t just take your bed from you—”  
  
Potter let his eyebrows rise. “You haven’t cared much about what I thought as a Lord before this,” he said. “Don’t start now, when it’s inconvenient.”  
  
And he walked out of the room, taking his friends and Greg with him, and shut the door gently behind him.  
  
Blaise lay back down on the bed. He shut his eyes. He turned his face away from the door.  
  
He didn’t try to stop the tears when they came, because he was already weak. 


	31. Councils of the Heart

“You think that you have prevented his mother from having any claim on him in the future?”  
  
 _Trust Snape to know the exact thing to say to make me doubt myself,_ Harry thought wryly, and resisted the urge to scrub his hand over his face. He sighed. “No. But I have it from Kreacher that she left the house, and I don’t think she would have done that if she thought there was any chance of reclaiming him right now.”  
  
Snape—Severus—stood up, his robes swinging around him. “Or unless she wanted to tear a wound in his heart, and knew this was the best way of doing so. I will go and check on him, and make sure that he is not tearing himself to death with his mother’s weapons.” He gave Harry a sharp look as he moved past.  
  
Harry sighed. “I should have thought of that, I know,” he called after Severus, ignoring the way Ron and Hermione bristled next to him. They hadn’t had time to realize yet, the way Harry had, how viciously Severus’s life had been changed by the bond. “Sorry.”  
  
Severus glanced back once at him, but continued climbing the stairs. At least Ron waited until he was out of sight before leaning close to Harry and muttering, “What a  _prick_.”  
  
“Don’t say that where he can hear you, Weasley.”  
  
Harry started and turned around. He knew Pansy was the one who had sent Kreacher to him with the warning, but he had thought she would have gone to bed by now. She was sitting at the kitchen table instead, a cup in front of her that was no longer steaming. She eyed Harry sourly and stood up with a sigh, stretching.   
  
“I assume that everything has gone well, and Mrs. Zabini is officially out of the house?” she asked.  
  
“You just heard me say that,” Harry said, and wished that he knew what to make of the expression Pansy fixed on him. Was she upset that he’d snapped at her? But the bond didn’t twinge on his arm, and that was the only way he knew that he wasn’t ignoring the needs of one of his vassals right now.  
  
Pansy grunted and rubbed the back of her neck. “Yes, I heard you say that,” she said. “I wondered if you could feel it in the house, if you’re connected to the wards in that way.”  
  
“No,” Harry said. “Kreacher was the one who had to tell me that she was gone.” And he was sure that he’d just said that, too, and he could understand the way Hermione’s hand hovered over her wand. “Maybe if I had my wand back, then I would have the kind of connection to the wards that this needs.”  
  
Pansy just nodded wearily, without much interest, and glanced at Ron and Hermione. “Don’t make this harder for him than it has to be,” she said, and trudged up the stairs in Snape’s wake. Harry blinked. If it wasn’t so obvious from context that she had meant his friends were making it harder for  _Harry,_ then he would have called Pansy back to ask exactly who she was talking about.  
  
“Thanks,” he called after her, but she didn’t stop or turn, leaving him to wonder whether she had heard him or not, and whether she was offended that he hadn’t told her that earlier if she was. He sighed and touched his forehead, although the scar didn’t burn.  
  
“Sit. Down.”  
  
Now Hermione apparently was insulted. Harry glared at her as she walked him backwards and settled him into a seat at the table. “What?” he snapped. “How did I offend  _you_  without even saying anything?”  
  
Hermione flicked a glance at Ron that told him to make himself good and busy better than any other Harry had ever seen, which apparently was the cue for Ron to start waving his wand and clearing cobwebs from the ceiling. Harry snorted. Hermione turned back to him and took the impulse to laugh away, though, by saying, “You can’t keep focusing on them like this.”  
  
Harry held up his right arm, in case they had missed the big glaring shield-mark there. “I have to focus on them. That’s what a Lord does.”  
  
Hermione sighed and rubbed his arm for a second, which made Harry blink. Come to think of it, he didn’t think anyone but him had touched his mark since he got it—no, wait, Hermione had done it once before, when she was trying to figure out what kind of bond they had, and Kislik had traced it with her wand. But it still felt as strange as though someone had reached out and touched his scar.  
  
“I mean that you can’t focus on every nuance of their emotions and wonder if they’re upset or not,” Hermione said quietly. “I saw the way you looked at Snape. Parkinson, too. I know that Zabini probably needed you to do what you did, leave the choice up to him, but you’re acting as though you’re responsible for the emotional health of all the Slytherins. That’s not true. You have to focus on yourself, too.”  
  
“The Lordship bond seems to suggest that’s exactly what I am,” Harry pointed out. “It burns me if one of them is angry or sad and I don’t do anything about it.”  
  
Hermione’s mouth thinned a little. “There was something I found in a book yesterday,” she said. “It was one of the reasons we didn’t come until today. I couldn’t believe what I was reading, and I couldn’t take the book from…where I found it.”  
  
Harry eyed her. Hermione turned a little red, but kept her steady grip on his hand and arm. Harry snorted despite himself. He was willing to bet ten Galleons that the “place” was the Restricted Section of Hogwarts library, which probably no one had the time or inclination to monitor right now. “You learned something about the bond?” he asked. “Something from a Dark Arts book?”  
  
“It’s not  _all_ Dark,” Hermione said, but nodded and kept going when Harry made an impatient little motion with his hand. The last thing he wanted was for Hermione to get on some tangent about a book and not come back to the main subject. “What I did read suggested that the bond isn’t functioning the way it should, and that’s probably due to the way it formed, accidentally, and the intense impulse you had to protect them. Maybe even your connection to Voldemort. Bonds usually connect Lords and vassals, but not as closely as they do in your case. They don’t punish the Lord if he doesn’t spend his entire day worrying about his vassals. It’s a connection that actually allows both of them to stay sane.”  
  
“That’s what mine is doing, too,” Harry snapped. “Unless you think that Blaise’s case is typical, and it would have been better to ignore him.” He looked up the stairs, wondering what Blaise and Snape were doing right now. Maybe he should be with them. He had left mostly because he had assumed that he was the last thing Blaise would want to look at right now.  
  
“But what about you?” Ron asked, suddenly coming back into the conversation. Hermione looked at him sidelong, but whatever reason she had for not wanting him to speak earlier seemed to have expired, as far as Ron was concerned. “How can  _you_ stay sane when you have to spend all your time worrying about them and whatever bloody stupid thing they’re going to do next?”  
  
“They’re not bloody stupid,” Harry muttered, but his attention was on the bond mark, which twanged and sent a few stinging arrows up his arm until he said those words.  
  
“Really?” Ron folded his arms. “Because so far we’ve seen Zabini calling up his mother, and Snape blaming you like always, and—well, Goyle and Parkinson have been okay, I grant you, and we haven’t seen Malfoy. But you said that he blamed you for his parents until he saw they were alive and well. They don’t give you any  _rest_. They always  _want_ something. If you wear yourself out serving them, how is that different than you wearing yourself out serving the wizarding world?”  
  
Harry looked from one of his friends’ faces to the other. Hermione was nodding, her eyes crinkled along the corners the way they got when she was telling him to do his own homework and being stern about not letting him copy from her. “That’s what I would have said, what the book said. The normal bonds, the chosen ones, focus on give and take. They don’t force the Lord to attend to his vassals’ every need, every hour of the day.”  
  
“Well, they don’t have anyone else right now,” Harry said. “And Blaise has been abused. You  _saw_ that.”  
  
“I don’t really care what they need,” Ron told him, his eyes so pained that Harry finally understood what a great effort Ron had been making to hold himself back from attacking the Slytherins—either verbally or otherwise. “They can’t have it if they kill you along the way.”  
  
“Part of that is the Freedom Fighters, too,” Harry reminded them, crossing his arms. “I wouldn’t be so bloody exhausted if they would  _stop attacking_.”  
  
Ron and Hermione exchanged a smile that was more Slytherin than they would have been happy to hear about right now. Harry chose to take it as a good omen. “What? Did you find out something about them?”  
  
“We found out something about Healer Kislik,” Hermione said. “And how she treated her last few patients in St. Mungo’s. She doesn’t work for them anymore, you know, no matter what she said. She’s an ‘independent’ Healer. And once we start telling the public about  _her_ and the Freedom Fighters, then she’ll be restricted. She might not care, but at least the Aurors are going to be looking for her, and any people with her won’t be able to move around as freely, either.”  
  
Harry leaned back and laughed. It felt like the first time he had done that in something other than sarcasm or despair for years. “You two are brilliant, you know that?”  
  
Ron coughed and rubbed his nails on his shirt. “We try.”  
  
“But in the meantime,” Hermione said, snapping back from her triumph with what Harry felt was unfair quickness, “we have to make sure that the bond doesn’t  _hurt_ you in the attempt to make you live up to the same level of intense protectiveness that you felt during the moment when Voldemort cast that curse. It wants you to do it  _all the time._ No human being can sustain that.”  
  
Harry cocked his head. “You think that’s what’s wrong with it?”  
  
Hermione nodded. “Like I said, most of the bonds I read about are chosen and agreed on between the vassals and the Lord. They even agree about what shape the mark will be. This mark is just shaped like a shield—you and the vassals didn’t agree on that. It comes from your Shield Charm and your attempt to protect them. Which is fine, but it’s kind of like accidental magic; it’s supposed to happen in this big burst. Not keep going, all the time. That’s what the bond has done.”  
  
“I still don’t want to end the bond,” Harry said firmly. “They need me, and I need them, and if we do that, Kislik wins.”  
  
“You can’t do that anyway,” Ron said. “Unless you manage to convince the bond that both you and a single vassal agree that you don’t need the bond anymore. Otherwise, the Lord probably dies, the way that that other Lord and Lady Kislik worked with did.”  
  
Hermione nodded. “But you can  _change_  the bond so that it doesn’t drain you so much. I think you were doing that already, when you talked about how you changed it so that it healed Zabini.”  
  
Harry sighed. “Okay, but how do I do that? That’s what we’re already looking up in the books, and I haven’t found a particular technique yet.”  
  
“The books I read don’t give a  _technique_ ,” Hermione said, and settled into lecture mode. “They say that you have to be in a certain frame of mind, and then concentrate until you find that you can reach out and manipulate the bond like it was a physical object. From what I read, it’s a little like Occlumency. Everyone has to find their particular comfortable threshold and work out from there.”  
  
“If it’s like Occlumency, I’ll be terrible at it,” Harry muttered, and slouched back against his chair, his arms folded, sulking and knowing he was sulking. But if he was terrible at one thing that required concentration, then he was going to be terrible at the other one.  
  
“You were terrible at Occlumency because Snape was a bastard who wanted to hurt you more than he wanted to teach you,” Ron began.  
  
Hermione and Harry scowled at him at the same time, and Ron threw up his hands. “Fine, fine, the bond, right. But it really does seem that what you really need is a space of uninterrupted time when you can relax and think of the bond and nothing else. Maybe that’s why you haven’t achieved much so far except in those sudden bursts of will. Everyone keeps  _interrupting_ you when you settle in.”  
  
Harry nibbled his lip, then nodded slowly. Mrs. Zabini interrupted his time with his friends, Blaise’s punishment interrupted getting to know his vassals better, the Freedom Fighters interrupted his sleep. And when he was resting, something else important would happen, like the Malfoys coming into the house. Then Harry would feel guilty that he hadn’t been awake to attend to it.  
  
But he couldn’t be awake all the time, and he wondered if his natural guilt was being “helped along” by the bond.  
  
“You would be able to protect me and keep me safe for a little while so I could do it?” he asked, glancing back and forth from Ron to Hermione.  
  
Ron grinned at him. “What are friends for?”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and swallowed. “Thanks. I suppose that we’d better get started on it as soon as we can, then.”  
  
“Oh, no you  _don’t,_ Harry James Potter,” Hermione said, so fiercely that even Ron looked impressed. “You’re going to have a good, normal night’s sleep first, and then a big meal in the morning. You can’t do this properly if you’re distracted by tiredness and hunger.”  
  
“But I slept most of the day today!” Harry said. “And I had a lot to eat right before you got here!”  
  
He stopped,  _hearing_ that he was whining. Hermione leaned forwards and tapped him on the nose. “Yes, but neither of those was normal,” she said kindly. “I think that you need to be on as normal a schedule as possible in order to confront the bond. You don’t want any distractions. And we’ll handle problems from your vassals that come up, and report to them to you if we really need to,” she added.  
  
Harry closed his eyes. It sounded like he really  _needed_ to do this in order to control the bond and eventually give everyone what they wanted from it, and he trusted no one more than his friends to protect him.  
  
But he did worry about what would happen if he had to retreat from contact for several hours. Could he trust his vassals to act fairly towards his friends? And vice versa?  
  
“We’re the ones who have wands,” Hermione said, making him open his eyes and look at her. “If they attacked us, they’d be the ones who were sorry.”  
  
“Snape has a wand, too,” Harry told her, but only shook his head when she looked a question at him. “It’s not that I’m worried about. It’s about you insulting each other and pulling on the bond to the point that I have to come out of the room and interfere. I really need you not to do that.”  
  
Hermione laughed and leaned back. “Is that all? We looked up charms for that, too. It’s a charm that depends on voice tone. It’ll let neutral or cheerful or fearful words through, but it charms everyone who has an angry or sarcastic tone to sound like they’re giving us compliments.”  
  
Harry gaped at her, then at Ron, who was giving Hermione a besotted smile. “Isn’t she  _awesome_?” Ron added, when he saw Harry looking at him.  
  
“She is,” Harry said, and gave Hermione a little salute, which made her blush even though Ron’s words hadn’t. She stood up and tapped the edge of the table with her fingers, looking as though she would have liked some papers to shuffle so that she could keep her hands busy. Then she shook her head and clasped her hands behind her back.  
  
“Let’s get you to bed, so that you have the time and energy to do this tomorrow,” she said.  
  
Harry nodded and started to speak, but a sharp twinge from the shield mark made him wince and clap his hand over it. Hermione opened her mouth, probably to ask if it was Blaise, but Harry already knew it wasn’t. It had come from much closer than the bedroom, and he knew that he probably would have felt Blaise leave that room long before.  
  
When he turned around, Malfoy—Draco—was standing in the entrance of the kitchen, with his head bowed. Harry looked carefully out into the corridor, and saw Ron doing the same, but it seemed his parents really weren’t with him.  
  
“Can we talk?” Draco whispered.  
  
Harry hesitated once. “If this is about that pamphlet that someone published, I don’t know where that came from any more than you do,” he said. “I think it was probably just the fact that your parents came here, and maybe someone has heard that protection was doubled on their cells, too.” He didn’t trust all of Stone’s Aurors the way he was willing to trust Stone herself.  
  
“It’s not about that.” Draco ducked his head further as Harry looked at him, and Harry sighed, recognizing the courage that it must have taken to come here in the first place. “ _Please?_ I really do have—a lot to say to you.”  
  
“If it’s insults, you can just keep it to yourself,” Ron snapped, and nodded to Harry. “We can have Hermione cast that spell she found on you, too, you know.”  
  
“That might not even be possible with the bond,” Harry said absently, his eyes still locked on Draco. Draco was ducking his head and looking as penitent as Harry had ever seen him. And he even thought this was real, rather than the false kind he would show if a professor had caught him doing something in Hogwarts. “I think this is important. Please, you lot? Can you give us a while?” He looked meaningfully at Hermione, who he thought would be more neutral about a Malfoy than Ron would.  
  
Hermione looked him straight in the eye. “You know it’s almost midnight, and we discussed the importance of you getting a good night’s sleep.”  
  
Harry had to smile. “I don’t have to get up early for classes tomorrow. Please? It’ll be fine,” he added quietly, when Hermione still hesitated. “I’ll walk away if he starts insulting me.”  
  
“I won’t.” Draco’s voice was so subdued that Harry scarcely recognized it. It made Hermione blink, too, he was pleased to note. He trusted her perceptions more than his right now. “I just—I need to talk to you. Please.”  
  
Harry nodded once. For Draco to beg, and in front of his friends, too, made it more likely to be something urgent. “We’ll take half an hour, no more than that. Can you go and find me another bedroom I can move into? Please,” he added himself, when his friends still hesitated. Harry understood why they were reluctant to leave him alone.  
  
But this time, he thought, it was his own brain and experience of Draco, and not the bond, telling him that things would be all right. He just sat there patiently waiting for Ron and Hermione to realize that, and Hermione finally nodded.  
  
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll even ward the room for you. But a half-hour is  _all_ you get.”  
  
She spoke more to Draco than Harry on those last words, Harry saw, and Draco ducked his head further and nodded, as though he was afraid even to look Hermione in the eye. Harry hoped it wasn’t real fear, just the need to do whatever they wanted so they would leave him alone to talk with Harry. Harry didn’t want any of his vassals to live in constant terror.  
  
Ron and Hermione walked through the kitchen doorway, and a moment later, a complicated sizzle of spells came from beyond it. Harry watched as the wards strung across the space, wards that would prevent eavesdropping and anyone else from coming in, as well as a few that he didn’t recognize and Hermione had probably looked up along with the information on the bond.  
  
Then he turned around and stood up, pulling out a chair for Draco. “Sit down before you fall down,” he said. “What did you want to talk about?”  
  
*  
  
Draco hadn’t known this would be hard.  
  
Well, it had been hard to gather up his courage and come downstairs, of course it had been. But he had thought that would be the most difficult step. Once he saw Potter, the words he had to speak would come pouring out of his heart. Why wouldn’t they? He was the one who had been wronged. If Potter had simply taken Draco to see his parents when they were in the Ministry, then Draco’s anxiety would have been assuaged, and he wouldn’t been tempted to join Blaise in his conspiracy plans.   
  
He wouldn’t have punched Potter, either. All of this stemmed from the single act of Potter not being human, maybe because he didn’t have parents himself and didn’t understand how intense Draco’s anxiety would be over them.  
  
But now, with the way that Potter watched him, his eyes and face locked shut even as he waited to answer what he seemed to assume would be a plea for help, Draco wavered. He had come to apologize. It was so  _hard_. All he had to do was be in Potter’s presence, and he started remembering all the awful things that Potter had done to him.  
  
 _And you did to him?_  
  
Draco scowled. He didn’t want to remember that part, no. He had come this far because his parents had told him to come, not because he thought it was a good idea. And then he had heard Potter and his friends talking about what Potter needed was some peace and quiet, and he had kept himself from bursting in with an effort. What about what  _Draco_ needed? Hadn’t everyone waited while Potter took his day-long nap, even if they had really needed to talk to him?  
  
“What is it?” Potter repeated, and his face had withdrawn even further when Draco glanced up at him, although Draco didn’t know how that was possible.   
  
 _He does think that I’m just here to complain,_ Draco realized abruptly.  _He doesn’t expect an apology._  
  
That thought finally made Draco take a deep breath and stand. “Potter,” he said, and his voice croaked a little as he held out his hand. “Can we start over?”  
  
Potter blinked at his hand, then at him, the movements slow and exaggerated. Draco winced again. Potter was really going to make Draco  _pay_ for this, wasn’t he?  
  
“I thought we already had,” Potter said. “When you came and talked to me with your parents. You made it clear that you weren’t going to continue plotting against me, and that was really the only thing you’d done that made me resent you.” He paused, examining Draco. “What else do we have to talk about?”  
  
“I want to  _really_ start over,” Draco said. “Whether you take my parents as vassals or not. Whether you care about me or not. I want to be more than Lord and vassal, because the other vassals also cause you trouble, like Blaise, or snipe at you, like Professor Snape.” Potter frowned and opened his mouth, probably to defend Greg and Pansy, but Draco rushed on before they could get distracted from the main subject. “I want to be your friend. If you’ll have me.”  
  
Potter continued to peer at him longer than Draco had expected. His hand began to tremble, and he knew he looked stupid, standing there like that with it out. But no one else would come into the room and see him thanks to the wards, so he waited.  
  
“What can you have to gain from my friendship?” Potter asked at last, his voice gentle. “My protection, yes, I understand why you want that. And why you want to have a more peaceful relationship with me. But why friendship? Why, Draco?”  
  
Draco shut his eyes, feeling swift tears spring up under them. Those tears frustrated him,  _so much_. But he held firm and took a deep and noisy breath, finally opening his eyes again to look as straight as he could at Potter’s—Harry’s—eyes.  
  
“Because I’ve wanted it for a long time,” he said. “And this is the first time in years that I think you might give it to me. I always wanted it from you willingly, you know. I dare say that it doesn’t seem that way, but it really was. I wanted—so many things.” His hand trembled again, but he closed it into a fist, and that stopped. “Will you give it to me now?”  
  
Harry studied him for one more moment, and Draco wondered if he could sense the other reason: that healing some of those old wounds might help Draco settle more comfortably in the bond. And, well, Draco wanted them healed.  
  
Then Harry smiled, the same smile that had nearly taken Draco’s feet from beneath him earlier, and extended his own hand. “You have it,” he said. “Or my best try at it. I don’t know how good I’ll be at it, at first.”  
  
“That’s all right,” Draco said, and blinked, fast, to keep his eyes from welling.  
  
They also stood there for a stupidly long time with their hands clasped, but Draco remembered the wards, and had room for a flash of regret when Harry let go.


	32. The Tug of Responsibilities

“I suppose that you know it might have been worse.”  
  
Blaise rolled slowly over. Professor Snape had sat with him for a long time before he spoke those words. Blaise wondered whether it was sensitivity that had kept Snape silent this long, or mere knowledge that Blaise wasn’t ready to speak to  _anyone_ about what had happened with his mother.  
  
 _Knowledge,_ Blaise decided, when he met those death-dark eyes. Professor Snape sat in a chair on the other side of the room, a book spread in his hands. Sensitivity could be mimicked by as perfect a Slytherin as the professor was, but not made real.  
  
Blaise made his throat work with his swallow, even though he didn’t want to. He leaned back and shrugged a little. “It could have been,” he said. “My mother and Potter might have dueled, and the bond would have punished me if I tried to aid my mother. Or she could have touched me with her ring.”  
  
Professor Snape examined him for a moment. Unexpectedly, that scrutiny comforted Blaise. He might have been a Potions ingredient. At least Snape wasn’t about to look at him  _differently,_ as if he had changed instead of the world around them changing.  
  
Then Snape said, “What ring are you talking about?”  
  
“She had a black ring on her hand,” Blaise said, concentrating on remembering the details of the jewelry. His mother was the one who had trained him to remember like that, so he would know how to survive if he was ever kidnapped or—or trapped in a Lordship bond, he remembered her saying once, with a faint smile that showed him how unlikely she thought that was ever to happen.  
  
Blaise swallowed the stickiness in his throat that he wouldn’t  _allow_ to turn into anything and went on. “I’d never seen it before. There were silver runes on the band, but I couldn’t tell what they meant. She touched it, and suffered no ill-effects. When Potter started making it clear that she couldn’t just walk away with me, she turned and swung it at me.”  
  
Professor Snape stood and came over to the bed. Blaise stared at him, but let Snape feel up his arms to his shoulders. Snape shook his head a little and stood back. “You are suffering from no ill-effects, then,” he murmured. Blaise might have laughed at him for imitating Blaise’s phrasing so closely in other situations, but this called for biting his tongue and nodding.  
  
“You are  _certain_ it did not touch you.” The professor prowled around the bed, eyeing Blaise from several directions.  
  
“I’m certain,” Blaise said. “Potter stopped it before it could.” He hesitated. “I didn’t know he could use the bond that way, sir. How—common is it for Lords to protect their vassals that way?” His mother had told him plenty about Lords and the way they neglected their other concerns, including business and families, for their vassals, but she hadn’t mentioned the bond or their magic being manipulated into a wandless shield.  
  
“Nothing about this bond is common,” said Professor Snape, meeting Blaise’s heavy gaze. “It may be that other Lords can do much the same thing, but I have not heard of it before.”  
  
For a moment, Blaise felt a little shiver that at least there was that, that he was in no  _common_ bond, but a deep and special one. Then he shook his head. The day he started feeling proud of the bond was the day that he lost his last chance for freedom. “What would the ring have done if it had touched me, sir?”  
  
“I cannot be certain without a more detailed description.” Snape stared Blaise in the eye, and Blaise silently reinforced his Occlumency shields and stared back. The professor turned away after a moment and walked over to resume his seat. “But it sounds like a slave-rune ring. The runes would crawled onto your skin and brand you the property of the one who had wielded the ring against you.”  
  
Blaise wanted to choke. “It must have been something else.” He almost blurted the words, and didn’t blame Snape for turning back to him, one brow rising. “It  _must_ have been, sir. My mother hates all forms of branding and marking and claiming. It was why she never took the Dark Mark.”  
  
“She may hate most of them,” Snape said. “Unless she is in charge of them, perhaps?”  
  
Blaise turned away from Snape’s clear gaze. He had never bothered telling his Head of House about his mother. Snape knew the common rumors about her husbands and their deaths, of course, and outside of that, Blaise had nothing to complain of. Potter had seemed appalled at the way his mother had been, but Blaise wasn’t.  
  
Or he  _hadn’t_ been, until he heard Professor Snape talking about this.  
  
He reminded himself that Professor Snape had said himself that he couldn’t be sure, not without a more detailed description of the ring—or seeing it himself—and muttered, “She was a Lord’s daughter. She hates them. I wanted—I wanted free of this because I knew she would never accept me with this on my arm.” He touched the shield mark, which thrummed. Blaise was too tired to figure out what that meant. “It’s  _impossible_ that she would want me as a bound slave of any kind, whether she was holding the leash or not.”  
  
Professor Snape only stood there, regarding him. Then he said, “What did she rear you to be?”  
  
Blaise was grateful that he understood enough to ask that question. Then again, most of the children that ended up in Slytherin had been raised by their families to be  _something:_ the perfect heir, like Draco, or quiet, or observant, or strong. Blaise was proud that he could answer with the last one.  
  
“She raised me to be strong,” he said. “And to stand independent and proud, even of her. Her equal, if I could. Weakness was not tolerated.”  
  
For a moment, Professor Snape’s eyes slitted, and he looked as if he would sigh. Then he said, “And do you think that the Malfoys meant to do less? That they wanted to raise Draco to be weak, or as emotional as he is?”  
  
Blaise sat up, his hands folding in his lap. “I know that the conditioning isn’t perfect, sir,” he said. “I like to think that I don’t have as many lapses as Draco does, but I know I’m not perfect, either. I hoped to become worthy of her someday, that was all.”  
  
The professor continued staring at him. Then he asked the question again, as if Blaise had never replied. “Do you think the Malfoys were aiming for weakness? For the person that Draco is? Or for an ideal heir that could copy Lucius from birth?”  
  
Blaise sighed a little. It seemed that he wouldn’t get anyone to listen to him until he answered their irrelevant questions. “I think they were aiming for the perfect heir,” he said. “Of course. But they never acknowledged his lapses, while my mother always told me that she understood mine and would wait for me to catch up.”  
  
He felt hollow and freezing a second later, remembering that  _he_ was the one who had turned away from  _her_ expectations. He clenched his fists in his lap.  
  
“Draco is not what his father hoped for,” said Snape. “Not perfect. On that, we would agree.” He inclined his head. “Do you think that his parents would ever walk away from him?”  
  
“Well, of course not,” Blaise said. This question wasn’t merely irrelevant, it was useless. “He’s their only child. They won’t get another chance at an heir, most likely. It has to be Draco or nothing.”  
  
Snape slowly swept his glance over him. “And is that the only reason? Do they not care for him at all?”  
  
Blaise shut his eyes and looked away. “You’re wrong,” he said. “In what you’re implying. My mother always forgave me and gave me another chance.”  
  
Professor Snape did not speak, and silence settled around Blaise’s words, until they fell to the carpet like the thick dust.  
  
Blaise shivered. He knew that his mother had done the best she could. That was what other people didn’t seem to comprehend. There were some things that his mother  _couldn’t_ do, either because they would make her weak and she had an aversion to weakness, or because her childhood had been even more constricted than Blaise’s own.  
  
 _When did I learn to think of the way she raised me as constricted?_  
  
Well, Professor Snape had asked him to compare his upbringing with Draco’s. Blaise knew some of the things that Draco had received as gifts and been permitted to do, from the way Draco bragged. But his mother couldn’t have afforded most of those things, because she lacked the money and the time. Was that what he was supposed to long for?  
  
He lifted his head. Professor Snape was still looking at him, his eyes as blank as the grey stone of the hearth in the corner.  
  
“I think that you need to decide whether she will give you another chance now,” he said. “And what it means that she was willing to use a slave-rune ring.”  
  
“You don’t know that’s what it was,” Blaise whispered, his throat aching with the dryness.  
  
“As you say,” Snape agreed, with the kind of mocking tone in the back of his voice that meant it wasn’t really agreement after all.   
  
“It  _wasn’t_ ,” Blaise said. “I didn’t get a good look at it, and who knows what it would have done? Maybe she would have killed me. She may have thought that being dead was better than being the slave of a Lord.”  
  
Snape’s gaze sharpened. “Is that the kind of thinking she taught you?” He tapped one forefinger on his lips. “I had been blushing that one of my Slytherins was trying such clumsy tactics to get free of an enemy—especially an enemy who is compelled by the bond to help him and to punish his wrongdoings—but now I understand. If she instilled that desire for freedom in you, then you would do anything for it.”  
  
Blaise was blushing now on his own account, and it was no more comfortable than being forced to blush for his mother. “You don’t  _understand_ ,” he whispered, and his throat was tight and aching. “It—it wasn’t that way. It never was. She taught me to be strong, and strength requires freedom. If I don’t break free of Potter, I’ll always be weak, always expecting someone else to intercede for me.”  
  
Professor Snape stood up. Blaise looked up at him. He didn’t think he’d convinced the man, as stubborn as he was, but he wasn’t sure what else the standing meant.  
  
Snape stood looking at him, as still as a dungeon wall, for some time, and then nodded. “You need more time to work this out,” he said. “But the traces of the path you will need to follow are in front of you at last. If your mother meant to kill you, then you must wonder why she bred into you that compulsion to be strong, why she was willing to murder someone she invested so much time and effort in. If she meant to make you a slave, then you must wonder at her violation of her own principles.”  
  
Blaise closed his eyes. “And you think that wondering, either way, will destroy my faith in her?”  
  
“The destruction has already begun,” Snape said simply, and reached out to lay a hand on Blaise’s shoulder. “You will question and find your way to true strength. If loyalty was your defining trait, the Hat would have placed you in Hufflepuff. Instead, you can find your way to self-preservation. Any Slytherin can.”  
  
Blaise buried his face in his hands. It was another weak gesture, but he had already accepted that he was weak, hadn’t he? It was the reason he had decided to detach himself from his mother, and stay here.  
  
He heard the door close quietly, and thought Snape was leaving him to think it over. But it appeared he had only gone to get another book, because he came back in a few minutes, and sat down in the same chair he’d used before, opening the book to the proper place.  
  
Blaise stared at him in confusion. Hadn’t Snape said that he needed to work out his way to self-preservation—whatever  _that_ meant—on his own? Why was Professor Snape still here?  
  
Then Blaise knew, and he turned over on the bed and put his head in his arms again.  
  
Just because he was going to be left to discover that path—whatever it was, whatever Professor Snape  _meant_ —didn’t mean that he was going to be without a guardian as he did so. They were probably afraid that he would hurt Potter or try to run away again and get them all murdered by Aurors or whatever the consequences were for breaking a Lord’s Word, Blaise thought resentfully.  
  
As his mind began to dim with fatigue, Blaise decided on something else, another possible explanation, but he discarded it as irrational. Had it been his mother keeping watch over him, then he might have dared to believe it, that they didn’t want him to be alone. But there was no one else who cared about him.  
  
He fled his own mind into sleep before the promptings, the whisperings, and  _rumors_ , of his thoughts that his mother had never cared for him that way, either, could properly begin.  
  
*  
  
Harry sighed and stretched as he stepped into the kitchen, Greg and Ron and Hermione following him. He had found another bedroom, not wanting to disturb Blaise and Snape in the one he’d originally picked, and this time he’d slept long and deep. When he woke, he’d found a few spells singing around him, and suspected Hermione had “helped” him with the long and deep sleep.   
  
But that didn’t matter, not against the sense of hope and thrumming courage it gave him. He could do anything now, and it would be that focused meditation on the bond as soon as he’d had breakfast.  
  
He stopped when he saw who was already in the kitchen, though. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy sat on one side of the table, and Draco on the other. All had their eyes fixed on them, although as far as Harry could tell, Draco’s was the only anxious pair.  
  
“Have you given any further thought to our offer to become your vassals, Lord Potter?” Lucius asked, lifting his teacup to his lips, although Harry couldn’t see any steam coming out of it.  
  
 _He makes it sound as though it’s some sort of favor he’s conferring,_ Harry thought, and curled his lip. He wished for a second that Snape was with him to give some approval and strength to his decisions, but then dismissed the idea. If he concentrated on it long enough, the bond might pull him from upstairs, and Blaise needed Snape more right now.  
  
“I have,” Harry said, and took a seat on the other side of the table. A beaming Kreacher immediately served him scones, butter, marmalade, pumpkin juice, kippers, and so many other plates that Harry had a hard time seeing what was on all of them. Besides, it was a little difficult when he didn’t really dare to look away from Lucius Malfoy’s eyes. “I’ve decided that it won’t do, not in the traditional sense.”  
  
Narcissa caught her breath. That could have been for a lot of reasons, and Harry didn’t look at her for more than one second.  
  
He  _did_ catch Draco’s betrayed glance, and winced, but there was no twinge from the bond. Harry wondered if that was because he was doing something that would benefit more of his vassals than taking the elder Malfoys on would.  
  
“May I ask why?” Lucius’s voice was small bells falling in snow.  
  
 _It’s the bond making me think things like that, it has to be,_ Harry decided crossly, and began to butter a scone. “You’ve already managed to put my vassals in danger by not being part of the bond,” he said. “You’re a formally acknowledged Death Eater who didn’t do anything for our side, the way Snape did by getting us the Sword of Gryffindor and—helping us in other ways. What do you think you’re going to do to our chances of surviving the trials free?”  
  
Lucius stared at him with slightly parted lips, and then glanced at Narcissa. She shook her head and laid her hand on his wrist, then turned to Harry with a mockingly polite inclination of her head. Harry let her do it. He had known that he would be making an enemy in her, after all.  
  
“Why should my husband go to prison?” she asked. “Because that is what you are aiming at, after all.”  
  
Lucius gave a little jerk, and Draco’s eyes widened. Harry  _knew_ that Draco hadn’t had any idea where this was going, but he wondered if Lucius really hadn’t, or just hadn’t allowed himself to voice the notion as plainly as that.  
  
“Because he was a Death Eater,” said Harry. “A willing one, and not a spy. Because he’ll drag down all our chances of staying free if I accept him as my vassal. I don’t owe him anything, because I didn’t mark him. I took his blood, but that was a sacrifice he was willing to make to let me find Draco.” He turned to Lucius, who was watching him in breathless, motionless silence. “In return, I’ll guarantee that Draco will survive his trial, because he’ll remain in the bond, and I’ll fight to protect him as hard as I can.”  
  
“If he remains in the bond, that would happen anyway,” Lucius said. Harry felt his friends shifting uneasily next to him. They probably thought Lucius would reach for his wand in the next second. Harry wondered if he had remembered to actually tell them that Lucius was unarmed.  
  
And so was Narcissa, which, seeing the expression on her face, Harry was glad for.  
  
“You would provide a distraction,” Harry said coolly. “And I think you’re perfectly capable of plotting against me and doing something that would disrupt my chances of protecting Draco if you thought that would gain a higher status for your family in doing so. If you’re out of the way in prison, I can know that you’re not plotting against me. And it shows that I can make a good faith gesture to the Ministry.”  
  
“That’s not what it is!” Draco’s voice exploded into the center of them like a bomb, and when Harry glanced at him, the betrayed look in his eyes was even more prominent. He did feel a dull, muted buzz from the bond, but it seemed uncertain, as though the bond didn’t know how he could spare Draco pain while also protecting his other vassals.  
  
“It’s what it’ll look like to them,” Harry said, as indifferently as he could. “And I think you were the one telling me that it didn’t matter so much what kind of gestures we made towards them, as long as we made one.”  
  
“I was the one telling you that,” said Narcissa, although Harry labored to recall the words to mind, and couldn’t. She gave Harry a slow, sweet smile. “Is this bargain contingent on the idea that I go to prison, as well? Because I find myself disinclined to do so.”  
  
Harry eyed the way she laid her hand on the back of her husband’s chair, and suspected she would try to restrain Lucius if he exploded. That  _might_ be of some service. Harry honestly wasn’t sure. He turned his head so that he was holding Narcissa’s eyes, and murmured, “I haven’t decided what to do about you yet. If you can help save Draco and convince the Ministry, you might be useful. If you plot against me, no.”  
  
Narcissa’s head went up so proudly that it was like watching a dragon in flight, Harry thought. But she said nothing for the moment. Harry turned back to the stone-silent Lucius and began to explain again. He thought it was a good sign that none of his friends had tried to interrupt yet. That meant he was doing  _something_ right.  
  
“I think that you would be a bigger hindrance to us than your wife. For one thing, she’s not as well-known for torturing and killing people and interfering in the Ministry.” Lucius flinched minutely, but said nothing. “For another, she saved my life in the Forbidden Forest, and we can spin that out to good effect.”  
  
“Listen to you, talking about  _spinning_ as though you knew what it meant,” Lucius muttered. But Harry could listen—perhaps the bond had made his senses sharper, too—and he knew that underneath the sarcasm was fear.  
  
“I will make sure that they don’t delay your trial until the Dementors come back,” Harry said, deciding that even more bluntness might help. “They lost control of them, and the people Voldemort put in charge of controlling them probably fell with him or fled when they realized their side was losing. It would take a long time for the Ministry to convince them to come back under control, if they ever could. You’ll go to an Azkaban without them, and you won’t be executed by the Kiss. That’s all I can promise.”  
  
“A great  _all_ ,” Lucius said, and his hands opened as if he would seize the knife and fork in front of him. Harry felt Ron and Hermione tense, and Greg do more than that, but they were still letting him handle this.  
  
He would have glanced back at them and smiled in gratitude, except that would mean relinquishing eye contact with Lucius, and he didn’t want to do that.   
  
“Yes, all,” Harry said. “I think it’s great, myself. Your son living under protection, the Malfoy line continuing, the political enemies who would rejoice over your fall not getting to destroy you. A prison term is better than death, and you know that you could expect death from some of them.”  
  
There was a scrape of a chair. Harry glanced over, thinking that Draco was standing up to flee the room, which Harry couldn’t really blame him for. But it was Narcissa who rose to her feet, and she leaned forwards and bent her body in an ornamental bow, while her eyes never released Harry’s.  
  
“Mr. Potter,” she said, her voice coming down with a thump on the first word as though to accent that she wasn’t about to call him a Lord, “can I speak with you privately?”  
  
Harry gave her a thin smile and stood up, ignoring the way that Hermione tugged on his arm. Severus had said that he didn’t know what Narcissa would do, that she was the more dangerous and unpredictable one. And as long as neither of them had a wand and Harry had the bond that would let him summon help if he really needed it, he thought this was about the  _least_ dangerous way he could deal with her.  
  
“Let’s,” he said, and walked out of the kitchen with her, ignoring the way that Greg shifted to go after them. Harry darted a glance at him, and that stopped soon enough. It was frustrating that Greg would obey him so intuitively, but there were good things about it, too.  
  
And in the meantime, Harry could come up with a political strategy that concentrated on the enemy immediately in front of him.  
  
He might even clear his mind enough of problems that he could concentrate exclusively on the bond later, as he had promised Hermione he would.  
  
 _Goodness. Maybe I’m becoming political after all._


	33. The World's Most Dangerous Women

The first place they came to that seemed suitable was the same room where Harry had spoken with the Malfoys last night--the room where he had spent most of the day asleep, with Greg on guard. He pushed the door open and took a swift glance around to make sure that no one was hiding there. The house was full of eavesdroppers, or at least people who would have a good motive to eavesdrop on  _this_ conversation.  
  
By the time Harry turned around, Narcissa had come into the room behind him and shut the door. Her face was filled with a white light that melted a little as she looked at him. "Do you always check so carefully for enemies?" she asked.  
  
"Since the safety of more than one person depends on me, I do," Harry said shortly, and braced himself near the fire. "What do you want to say?"  
  
Narcissa took a seat on the same couch she had sat on during their previous conversation, and pulled back her left sleeve. Harry tensed, then relaxed when he realized what she was doing. Her left forearm was bare, and she turned it back and forth as if admiring the shine of the skin in the firelight.  
  
"If you think I will drag your chances down," she said, and raised her eyes to Harry's face.  
  
Her gaze was like a blow, but Harry had already got used to dodging or rolling with glances like that. He nodded a little and said, "I think what would really do it is if you opposed Lucius getting sent to prison."  
  
Narcissa leaned forwards, her hands dangling and clasped between her knees. "Of all who committed crimes during the war, I do not see why my husband should pay the price," she said.  
  
"Because he's the one who got caught," Harry said bluntly. "And because I had the misfortune to bind your son. If that wasn't the case, then maybe you could do whatever you wanted, and win free the same way he did in the first war. But you and I both know the circumstances are different now."  
  
Narcissa turned her face towards him, this time with an odd blindness in her eyes. "You would hurt Draco because of this?"  
  
"No." Harry turned his own arm so that she could see the shield mark. "This means I  _have_ to protect him. But you can make this a lot more difficult if you insist that I should protect  _you_ , too. I might be able to protect you, now that I know you were never Marked. There is no way that I can do it with Lucius."  
  
"Draco bears the Mark, too."  
  
Looking at Narcissa, Harry had to wonder about what Snape had told him. Snape had said Narcissa was dangerous because she would sacrifice anything, even her family, for Draco, but she seemed to be fighting just as hard for Lucius. Maybe her family as a whole was the most important thing to her.  
  
"I know," Harry said. "But he also has his age going for him, and the fact that he wasn't accused of being a Death Eater in the previous war. And the bond will make me do  _something_ for him. Whether that's very limited is going to depend a lot on circumstances. Maybe I can't keep him out of Azkaban. But I'll try."  
  
Narcissa frowned like someone trying to understand a complex maths problem. "Because it would affect you."  
  
"Yes," Harry said. He thought about telling her that Draco had asked for his friendship, and then rejected the idea. She probably already knew, and it wouldn't make a difference if she didn't. It wasn't like Lucius could ask for his friendship and have Harry extend his hand in the same way.  
  
Narcissa sat up, and her hands were folded on her knees now, no longer dangling. "If your main concern is what you feel through the bond on account of the vassals, you should fight all the harder to keep Lucius free. Otherwise, you will feel Draco's depression and fear for his father."  
  
"I don't intend to condemn Lucius to death," Harry said. "We can tell the story of him giving his blood to me if you think it'll do any good. But I don't think I can keep him out of prison, no. And I have enough to do,  _plenty_ of other things, with the way the bond compels me to act. I don't need another burden."  
  
" _My son_ is not a burden."  
  
Harry blinked. Of all the words he had said, he hadn't expected  _that_ to touch a nerve. But he responded with equal bluntness. "He might not be, but he's been one so far. If his depression weighs me down, he will be. But I can't think just about him. I have to think about my other vassals, and three of them are at least cooperating with me."  _More than that, in Greg's case._ "I can't condemn them all because I'm so busy worrying about Draco. If he makes himself a problem, then I'll deal with that. It doesn't mean that I'll spend all of my time soothing him."  
  
Narcissa watched him with a faint frown. "If he had sworn to you as vassal in a normal Lord relationship, then you would be compelled to do something for his parents."  
  
"But this  _isn't a normal Lord relationship_ ," said Harry.  _Fuck her._ "That it isn't  _is the whole point._ The Ministry doesn't really know what to do with me. I don't really know what to do to wield the bond like a weapon, even though I'm learning. And I don't think Lucius would have wanted his son to swear to me in normal circumstances."  
  
Narcissa rose to her feet and took a slow step back and forth in front of the fire. "My husband does in fact think this is the best place for our son right now. Draco may someday be a leader and capable of fending for himself, but he is not at the moment. If we cannot protect him, then Lucius is glad that there is someone who can."  
  
Harry stared at her. "Lucius agrees with me? Then why are you arguing?"  
  
"Because I believe there is a way to spare both my son and my husband, if you are willing." Narcissa turned to eye him again.  
  
Harry spread his hands.  _Slytherins. She could have just said that right away and saved us a lot of time and trouble._ "Then say it. I don't know if I'm willing until I hear it."  
  
Narcissa raised her hands and let them fall. "I  _believe_ there is a way. I do not know it. I will trust you to find it." She walked towards the door, but not before Harry had the chance to notice a tiny smile flitting along the corner of her mouth.  
  
"Why?" Harry asked her back, irritated. "You didn't seem to trust me much up until this second!"  
  
Narcissa paused with a hand on the doorknob and turned her head to look back at him. "Because you are Harry Potter," she said, and stepped out into the corridor. Infuriatingly, she closed the door quietly behind her, as if he had asked for a moment alone.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his hand across his scar. Narcissa was right, in one way, he thought. If he wanted to use all the power of his name and summon legions of his devoted fans, then he would be able to break out of the Ministry's hold and maybe convince the Wizengamot that he wasn't their pawn.  
  
 _Maybe._  
  
The problem was, the Wizengamot thought he was a political threat, and if they continued to believe that, Harry knew they wouldn't back off. And they weren't that impressed by anything he had done so far. He would have to have time to come up with some kind of counter-strategy, and that was what they wouldn't allow him.  
  
Besides. Who was supposed to take care of his vassals while he was busy using the power of his name and summoning legions of his devoted fans?  
  
Harry opened his eyes and stood upright once more. He needed breakfast, and then he needed to meditate on the bond the way Hermione had suggested he should. Everything else was just a distraction, right now. The only thing he had gained from the conversation with Narcissa was that Lucius himself might not oppose being sent to prison.  
  
As for Draco...  
  
Harry sighed. He would have to deal with that serpent, Draco's dissatisfaction and unhappiness, when it tried to bite him on the backbone. Gaining control of the bond was more important than that. The vassals as a whole were more important than one, even one who he had promised friendship to.  
  
He paused when he thought that. He'd been furious, learning about Dumbledore's attempts to justify the greater good, and saying that some people were more important than others. But when it came down to it, Harry  _couldn't_ sacrifice the whole bond and his other vassals and his own peace of mind and his promise to Hermione because Draco was unhappy.  
  
 _Maybe if we were friends before, or if there was some other way to do this..._  
  
Harry then shook his head firmly. Trying to think of other ways to do this and handle everything with no dent in anyone's sensibilities was what had got him in trouble before. He opened the drawing room door and stepped out into the corridor.  
  
Pansy was waiting for him. Harry checked and managed to swallow back the groan that was rising up his throat, but it was difficult. From the way she folded her arms and frowned, she had some other crisis to present him with.  
  
But for some reason, she didn't say it right away. "Yes?" Harry finally prompted in annoyance, after she had just continued to stand there and stare at him instead of doing anything sensible.  
  
Pansy sighed as though he was paining her, and reached out a hand. Kreacher appeared, bowing, and laid a heavy tray across Pansy's arm. She staggered a bit, but managed to remain standing upright as she held it out to Harry.  
  
"I thought you might want some breakfast without going back into that kitchen," she said quietly. "Draco isn't taking it well."  
  
Harry listened, heard a whinging voice, and winced. "Right," he muttered, and took the tray from Pansy and carried it back into the drawing room. Pansy followed him. Maybe she thought that  _she_ didn't want to be in the same room with Draco either.  
  
There were grilled-cheese sandwiches on the plate, and little tomatoes, and square things that turned out to be, when Harry prodded them, chunks of tuna formed into cubes. He shook his head, wondering why Kreacher had chosen  _that_ , but ate them willingly enough, and drank the pumpkin juice that Kreacher brought a few minutes later. Pansy ate a few of the tomatoes, and tried one of the tuna cubes before turning her nose up at it.  
  
"Granger told me that you were planning to meditate on the bond."  
  
Harry looked up, blinking. "Hermione  _told_ you that?" he asked, before he could stop himself.  
  
Pansy arched an eyebrow. "Odd as it is, I sometimes  _do_ learn about things you're doing from methods other than eavesdropping, my Lord."  
  
"But why, when the eavesdropping is so effective?" Harry murmured. For a second, Pansy's face looked as if it would freeze, and then she relaxed and smiled back.  
  
"This time, I went and asked her. Your friends are on guard down the corridor, to make sure that Draco and the Malfoys don't take it into their head to disturb you, but they weren't going to notice if  _I_  left. Granger told me that you aren't very good at meditation. I wouldn't say that I'm an  _expert_ , but it is something I've been taught to do, so I can tell you a little if you like."  
  
Harry grimaced and swallowed another tomato. "I wasn't good at Occlumency when I had to learn it. Then again, it was Snape who was trying to teach me, and we--didn't get along."  
  
"Obviously," Pansy drawled. "There's one thing you should try to keep in mind, one that I think would suit an active personality like yours more than the usual directions to sit there and think of nothing. Focus on your target, and chase it. Like you would the Snitch," she added, when Harry frowned at her. "No matter what else you're tempted to think of, keep chasing that one thought. It's quite as difficult to focus on one thing for hours as it is to dull and blank your mind of emotion."  
  
Harry nodded slowly, considering it. That made sense, and it  _did_ sound easier. "All right. You think fixing my thoughts on the bond makes me likely to catch it?"  
  
"Who was the youngest Seeker in more than a century?" Pansy retorted, and stood up, patting his arm lightly. "As soon as Greg could slip away unnoticed, he was going to come and stand guard outside the actual room you pick. I'll guard this one as if you were in there."  
  
Harry finished his breakfast and stood up. "Draco ought to be able to tell from the bond that I'm not."  
  
Pansy grinned at him savagely. "One thing I  _did_ learn about the bond last night, when I was trying to locate where you were in relation to Blaise and his mother, was that anxiety makes it harder to concentrate on the shield mark and the way it links the two of us. And if Draco shows signs of getting too calm, then I can always irritate him again."  
  
Harry sighed as he slipped out into the corridor. "I don't really want to hurt him like that," he muttered. "He's already been hurt enough."  
  
"The problem with Draco," Pansy said, shutting the door to the drawing room firmly and taking up her position in front of it, "is that he always wants his problems to be fixed  _now_. Your friends--commendably, I might add--tried to explain to him that you were getting a better focus on the bond today, and that after that, you would know what you could and couldn't do with it, and you would be better able to use it to defend us. That might even include his parents, because defending Draco  _might_ mean defending them. But he wouldn't listen."  
  
Harry looked closely at her, but she didn't seem to be lying to make him feel better. And, well, that wouldn't be Pansy's style, either, he had to admit.   
  
"Thanks," he said, and walked down the corridor, to the room that Hermione and Ron had prepared that morning while he was having his lie-in. They'd moved all the furniture out of it except one comfortable chair, and dimmed the staring red wallpaper down to a dusky color that made it look a little like the walls of the Gryffindor common room in the firelight. Harry sat down and stared into the flames.  
  
At least the good sleep last night had made him unlikely to fall asleep by doing this, he thought a minute later.  
  
And he still had no idea how to clear his mind, but when he pictured the bond as a Snitch and turned his attention to that, he was astonished by how sharp and clear the image was. It hovered and bounced in front of him, gleaming, and Harry almost smiled as he reached out to capture him.  
  
It darted away from him, and the hunt was on.  
  
*  
  
"I thought  _you_  were my friend, Pansy."  
  
Draco didn't think his voice came out anywhere near heavy and scornful enough for the look Pansy turned on him, but Draco gritted his teeth and went on. "If you're protecting the room where Potter is, then I need to speak with him."  
  
"What about?" Pansy looked like a statue now, one of the statues that Draco had seen guarding Hogwarts, or maybe even that bloody gargoyle that he had always heard protected the Headmaster's office. She looked at him motionlessly down her nose.   
  
"About him putting my father in prison." Draco shut his eyes, rubbing his own forehead for a second. He didn't get to break down right now, but Merlin, how he wanted to. "What did you  _think_ it was about?"  
  
He opened his eyes in the hope that his sarcasm would have made some impact on Pansy, but she was watching him with utterly calm disdain. She shook her head a little, at least breaking the statue impression, when Draco stared at her. "He wouldn't be the one putting your father in prison. The Ministry would be doing that. What he's doing is asking your father not to fight it."  
  
"Which is  _ridiculous_." Draco heard his voice soar, but they were the only ones in this little corridor. And if he woke Potter from the nap he was probably taking and he came out to speak to Draco, so much the better. "Would he cooperate if someone asked him to go to prison?"  
  
"If it was for the sake of his friends or something else?" Pansy nodded.   
  
Draco raised one hand and rubbed at the shield mark. It wasn't tingling or burning, but he was a little surprised it wasn't, honestly. "You think  _that_ well of him? You really think that he would sacrifice himself for people he's always hated?"  
  
Pansy smiled a little. "He always hated you and Professor Snape, maybe. I don't think he paid enough attention to me and Greg and Blaise to hate us."  
  
Draco clenched his fists. "But you really believe that he would give himself up for us?"  
  
"Now that he's bonded to us, the bond may force him to," Pansy murmured. "But I was speaking in general. If his friends' health depended on his going to Azkaban, he would. And don't say that he should care more about other people," she added, when Draco opened his mouth unsure of what he would say. "He already  _died_ to save the wizarding world. Should he have to do it again to save your father?"  
  
Draco shook his head. "I never--I never thought that my father would have to go to prison." That was true, even when they had been in the holding cells at the Ministry.  
  
" _Really_?" Pansy stared at him. "Not even if the Light side won? Did you picture your father just kissing the Dark Lord's robe hem forever?"  
  
Draco felt himself flush. Although Pansy couldn't know it, because Draco had never told her the truth about his task last year, he couldn't help the thought that his father might have been better off, and  _Draco_ could have given him the chance to be so.  
  
To chase away the thoughts, he spoke on, as hurriedly as he could. "I thought he would either regain the prominence in the Dark Lord's ranks that he lost, or he would manage to escape," he whispered. "I thought we would all go to France, or--something. We wouldn't get caught, and we wouldn't go to Azkaban."  
  
Pansy just shook her head, her expression remote and distant. "And again, Lord Potter's just asking that of your father, the one with the most acknowledged crimes."  
  
Draco took a step forwards. He had to break through her mask somehow. " _You_ were the one who wanted to turn Potter over to the Dark Lord!"  
  
"Yes," said Pansy. "And from the way he's treated me, he's forgiven me for that. I know that he's one to hold grudges, but I don't think he's one to plot revenge in secret. If he hated me for it, then he would just tell me straight out, and have a punching match, or a hexing match if we still had our wands."  
  
Draco shut his eyes. He was trying to forget, and failing, the way that Potter had promised him forgiveness and friendship only just last night. Why would he do that, if he knew that he would betray Draco in the morning?  
  
 _Because I asked him to_.  
  
It was a strange conclusion, but the only one that Draco could come to. Potter probably hadn't intended it as a betrayal, even. It was just what he thought he should do next, to protect his vassals and the bond and himself and his friends and...whoever else he felt like he had to protect. Draco might have done the same thing to protect his family.  
  
"You're seeing it now?" Pansy's voice asked somewhere outside the darkness of his eyelids.  
  
Draco took a deep, bitter breath and opened his eyes. "Yeah," he said. "Seeing that I can't trust him to put the interests of my family first, not when he has so many other interests to protect and he exhausts himself serving every one of them." He turned and walked away from Pansy.  
  
He didn't know if she made a gesture or said something to try and slow him down. He kept his eyes focused straight ahead, and jammed a fist into his palm when he was around the corner and thought she probably wouldn't see it.  
  
Yes, he could understand Potter all too well. He knew what it was like to have his first loyalty to something other than the person right in front of him, asking for his allegiance.  
  
But that didn't mean he could support Potter, or continue in the friendship with him, even. And not because he thought of him as an enemy or a traitor, with this new understanding. It was just that they had different first loyalties, and Draco no longer thought that his family's interests were best served by following Potter.  
  
*  
  
The bond twisted in front of him, no longer in the form of a Snitch, but a golden band glowing blue along the sides. And Harry leaned towards it, his mind so focused now that it felt as if he had an arrow sticking out of his forehead, and grabbed it.  
  
This time, although the light and the magic bucked in his grip, it also subsided into a calm glow a second later. Harry drew it towards him, watching it all the time, waiting for a rebellion.  
  
But it wouldn't do that, he realized a second later. That was one difference between the bond and a Snitch. The Snitch went on trying to escape even after it was captured, its wings fluttering madly. It didn't belong to anyone; even the Seeker who'd caught it at the moment was only the latest in a long line.  
  
But the bond was  _his_. It was formed of magic that blazed through him, and through the shield marks, and his intentions were important. It had made a shield mark and bonded the Slytherins because he had intended to protect them.  
  
And if he wanted it to do something else--such as relax enough to let someone slip free from it--then he could do that. It was as Hermione had said. A true Lordship bond would do what its Lord commanded, the way it wanted him to command his vassals. Harry had initiated this one with accidental magic, so it was different.  
  
But it didn't have to go  _on_ being accidental. Harry could do things through choice, too.  
  
He opened his eyes, and stared at the ceiling of the room, and laughed aloud.


	34. A Breath of Fresh Air Blowing

“I do not understand what you are telling me.”  
  
Severus was sure that his words were prim enough to drive Potter off, but Potter just grinned at him and shook his head. His face was flushed with a shine that Severus had never seen before, not even when he was training him in Defense and Potter was dancing along the edge of a spell he knew well. And the buzz of the shield mark on Severus’s arm suggested that there was an even stronger emotional component to this.  
  
Severus rubbed the mark thoughtfully. Come to think of it, he had felt a sharp sensation through it earlier, not so much like a sting as like a wave crashing down against a rock. He had meant to ask if anyone else had felt it, but the only member of the bond nearby had been Mr. Zabini, and he was asleep.  
  
“I mean that you can be _released_ from the bond.” Potter leaned forwards and lowered his voice. They were in the library, and he seemed to have remembered that the walls had no Soundproofing Charms. “I can free you. I wanted to tell you first, before anyone else, because I know that you have special reasons to hate the bond.”  
  
Severus went still, staring at the boy. He wondered for a moment how Potter had understood all the complex tangle of Severus’s emotions, his desire to be set free from serving a master after he had served two—  
  
And then shook his head. It was less complicated than that. Sensing Severus’s desire to die must have told Potter all he needed to know about Severus’s hatred for the bond.  
  
“You are not serious,” Severus whispered. “And I hate the bond less than Mr. Zabini does. You should have told him first.”  
  
Potter laughed, sounding absurdly cheerful. “You wouldn’t be yourself unless you were criticizing my actions. At least I know the bond hasn’t entirely tamed you.” He gave Severus a fond look that was _entirely inappropriate,_ as though he might reach out and ruffle Severus’s hair, or some nonsense of that nature. “Anyway. You ought to think about this. Zabini was asleep. I’ll tell him later.”  
  
“You cannot manipulate the bond to that extent,” was the only thing Severus could think of to say next.  
  
“Actually, I can.” Potter leaned back in the large chair he had used yesterday to sit while researching and looked utterly at ease. “I meditated on it, the way that Hermione and Pansy told me to do, and I caught it.”  
  
“I am unfamiliar with the term _catching_.” Severus folded his hands in his lap. “At least as employed in this text. Is that a technical term that you learned from the books you were reading on the bond?” He pressed his hands harder into his lap to keep them from shaking, and to try and crush his hope before it grew too large.  
  
“No,” Potter said. “I was picturing the bond as a Snitch, and I chased it that way. And now I caught it, and now it does what I want.”  
  
“A captured Snitch does not,” Severus said, and gave Potter the deepest look of disapproval he could manage. It was hard, with the hope kicking against his control.  
  
Potter only smiled at him. “It was a useful metaphor at the time, but it’s only a metaphor. I can make the bond do what I want it to now. Do you want me to free you?”  
  
Severus shut his eyes. “Do not promise what you cannot give me,” he whispered, and his voice shook, and he did not _care._  
  
“I’m sure that I can deliver on this, Sna—”  
  
“Why should I believe you, when you cannot even keep the promise that you made to call me by my first name?” Severus snarled, and felt the ground steady beneath him. It did not lessen the hallucinatory value of Potter’s incredible offer, but at least it taught him more about how he should respond. He opened his eyes and glared into Potter’s startled face. “If you pair it with my first name, I might be more inclined to believe you.”  
  
Potter scanned him keenly, with eyes and maybe with the bond. Severus felt another tingle from the mark on his arm, and frowned. He would not be much surprised to discover that Potter had learned to use _that_ to manipulate him, too.  
  
“All right,” Potter said at last, and repeated himself. “I’m sure that I can deliver on this promise, Severus.”  
  
Severus took another breath as the universe spun out of control again, his heart pounding.  
  
What was _wrong_ with him? He ought to be rejoicing that there was so much hope of freedom, and it seemed that Potter believed it, at least.  
  
He was afraid of what might happen if he suddenly found no protection standing between him and the Ministry. That was part of it. He could admit that, brutally, to himself. He didn’t like the admission, but that did not change the truth of it.  
  
But the other part was that he did not want to think of what would happen if he left the bond and Potter was left with Draco and Blaise—both of whom distrusted him—Pansy—who would serve his goals only so long as they coincided with hers—and Greg—who would serve his goals too well.  
  
 _The bond is affecting me,_ Severus thought in disgust. He had been half-sure of it before; he was fully sure now. _Since when have I cared about the idea that Potter might not advance his goals?_  
  
And then he grimaced, mocking himself more than Potter. Since he had spent most of the war struggling to make sure that Potter survived long enough to obey Dumbledore’s plans for him, of course. It might not exactly have led to preserving Potter’s _life_ , but he wanted to advance Potter’s goals of taking down the Dark Lord, and then of dying for everyone involved.  
  
This bond had still influenced him, he thought. Did something to the way he thought, or the latitude he was prepared to give Potter. Still, perhaps the difference was not as great as he had thought it would be.  
  
“What would happen if I was free?” he asked, to reduce the aching in his throat and his mind when he thought about Potter.  
  
“The same thing that would have happened if you were free immediately after the war, I imagine,” Potter said, in a blank voice that indicated he didn’t understand Severus’s response. “You would go—I don’t know, brew Potions or teach in another school or do whatever you wanted to do now that you didn’t have a master.”  
  
Severus was aware of grimacing horribly when Potter suggested teaching in another school, but Potter didn’t pursue it. He sat there, eyeing Severus curiously instead. Did he even know what he was saying?  
  
“I would have been under arrest,” Severus said. “If not the bond and the circumstances that conspired to make you my Lord and me protected by you.”  
  
“You’re under arrest anyway,” Potter pointed out.  
  
“I mean that I would have been under _worse_ arrest,” Severus snapped, and then abandoned that line of reasoning. It sounded absurd even to him. “Thanks to your protection, I can survive now, and have a chance of them listening to my story of Unbreakable Vows instead of sending me to Azkaban on sight.”  
  
Potter frowned in silence for a moment, thinking. Severus did not see what he had said that was so complicated, but he wanted to enjoy the unusual sight of Potter _thinking_ before he leaped, and didn’t interrupt.  
  
“You want to remain my vassal until the trials are over with, then?” Potter finally asked.  
  
Severus nodded. “I think it would be best.”  
  
Potter considered some more. “What about Blaise? He seemed determined to be set free immediately, and I could do that, I think. They would still question him, but he doesn’t have the Mark and he might be able to make the argument that he did it under duress if anyone brings up him torturing students.” He paused when Severus shook his head. “You don’t think it’s a good idea? Why?”  
  
“Because Mr. Zabini needs to be protected from himself, for right now, and from the woman that he would undoubtedly head back to if given half a chance,” Severus said. He was glad that he could be so blunt, in a way that he could not have been with either of his previous two masters—at least, not with any effect other than a Cruciatus Curse from the Dark Lord and a merry laugh from Albus. “As long as you have the bond, you have a claim over him. Release it, and there is nothing to keep him from going back into the Ministry holding cells.”  
  
“Where Mrs. Zabini could reach him,” Potter finished, and sighed. “All right. I don’t like this feeling of deciding for someone else, but I’ll do it.”  
  
“You are deciding on my advice,” Severus said. “If that makes it any better for you.”  
  
He expected Potter to flare up, since he had never liked obeying an adult’s advice before, but he received a grin instead, once that was almost grateful. “Thanks,” Potter said, shaking his head. “I just don’t like the feeling that it _only_ depends on my decision, you know? Even when I was walking to my death, at least it was something that you and Dumbledore had already decided would work. I never would have dared to do it if I wasn’t sure of that, just because I would be afraid of messing something up.”  
  
“Do not blame that decision on me,” Severus said, more harshly than he meant to, and more harshly than he knew Potter merited, from the way the boy was staring at him. But he could not bear to hear Potter speak as if Severus had agreed with Dumbledore’s mad plan of risking everything on the willingness of a seventeen-year-old boy to commit suicide. “That was Albus’s idea.”  
  
“Okay,” Potter said slowly, and then nodded at the door. “Do you mind if Ron and Hermione join us? Hermione had some ideas about the bond.”  
  
Severus snorted and turned to face the door as it opened. “I am surprised that you did not have them with us the entire time, instead of reduced to eavesdropping in the corridor.”  
  
Potter said nothing, and Severus finally turned around when he realized that no answer was forthcoming. Weasley and Granger had both halted in the doorway, as if reluctant to come further in, although Severus was the one who felt a tingle from the shield mark on his arm, sharp and cool as if his skin was tasting peppermint.  
  
The look on Potter’s face made him flinch more than the feeling of the shield mark. That could have come from many things, but the expression on Potter’s face from a limited number of them.  
  
“I gave you time to talk to me yourself because I wanted your input on the state of the bond, and Blaise, and whether you wanted to be free,” Potter said quietly. “That’s the kind of thing you should decide for yourself, and without feeling that you needed to prop up your pride because there were two other Gryffindors in the room. I would never demean my friends to eavesdropping on any conversations that actually concerned them.” He turned to face Granger. “And you think that extending a shield over the house from the bond would help?”  
  
“More than that,” Granger said, giving Severus a minute examination that reminded him of the way that Pomfrey would look over some potions that he had brewed for her, and then ignoring him entirely. “I think that it’s possible to turn that shield on their arms into a real shield.” She marched to the library table and spread out a piece of parchment that she’d been carrying.  
  
“What, the mark isn’t a _real_ shield already?” Potter relaxed into his chair, grinning at her. “I’m offended!”  
  
Severus eased backwards to the door, watching the way that Potter’s face softened when he smiled at his friends. He would not leave unless Potter ordered him to; he valued the opportunity to watch Potter in his natural environment too much. Well, the one that his friends created for him, at least.  
  
“Not a shield that binds the person to you in anything other than the bond.” Granger was speaking quite seriously, her hair dangling over her ear as she consulted the parchment. Noting the bewitched look on Weasley’s face, Severus sneered. _There_ was a match made in dim-witted heaven. “If you were somewhere else, the way you were when they were kidnapped, then you couldn’t necessarily do anything else to protect them. But this would let you turn the mark into a shield that would cover most of their body.”  
  
“Only most?” Potter was on his feet in seconds, twisting around the table so that he could see the parchment from over Granger’s shoulder, as she seemed to have no intention of actually raising her head. Severus rubbed his arm. Yes, the bond was much more animated now, small sparks trailing down his arm as if the shield was being newly-forged. Potter was animated most by talking about defending people.  
  
 _Of course he was. If he was not, none of us would be in this ridiculous situation._  
  
Severus grimaced. Even to himself, that thought failed to have the necessary bite.  
  
“I don’t think the bond would cover the shield mark itself.” Granger frowned harder than ever and rapped a quill against the parchment. She was the only person Severus had encountered who knew how to make such noise with a feather. “It’s weird. It’s a chink in the armor no matter what permutation of the bond I read about. Apparently affecting the bond mark is impossible with the bond itself.”  
  
“But that would be okay.” Potter’s eyes were bright. “It would at least protect their heads and hearts and most of the blood in their body.”  
  
“Someone could still bleed us dry with enough force that cut into the bond mark,” Severus interrupted, holding his arm up.  
  
Weasley and Granger gave him odd looks, and Severus reminded himself of his earlier impulse to vacate the room. Why hadn’t he done so?  
  
“But in that case, the bond would go crazy, and I understand how to use it to bring me to you now.” Potter dismissed the possibility with a flick of his hand. “I’m less worried about you being kidnapped, and more about you being attacked and maybe murdered when I’m not there.” He turned insistently back to Granger. “I want to try it. How do I flex the bond?”  
  
Granger showed him some notations on the parchment that Severus doubted would have made sense to him even if he was right there. Potter was the one who had done the meditation on the bond, and would understand them. He was the proper person to take it up—  
  
Severus froze as he realized what he was thinking. He was actually _leaving something in Potter’s hands._ Thinking that Potter was _the proper person_ to take care of it.  
  
That was the concrete way the bond had affected his thinking, much more than by making him interested in what became of Potter. Everyone in the wizarding world had had to be like that in the last few years, if only for self-preservation’s sake. But he could think back over the last few days now, and see where he had trusted Potter where he would not have done so before. Even appreciated his power, as though he was proud of it.  
  
Severus opened the door and stepped through.  
  
“Severus?” Potter called after him, and if his friends started at the name, Severus did not look back to see them do so. “I thought you might want to stay. You’ll be the first one that I try this modification of the bond on, if you’re willing.”  
  
Severus thought it best to shut the door and walk away. If that did not tell Potter what he thought of the notion, the utter rejection flowing down the bond ought to.  
  
No, he was not interested. No, he would not trade even a full-body shield for the right to be independent and think his own thoughts, to choose who he trusted (no one), for the ability to make decisions for himself.  
  
 _As soon as the trials are over, I will ask to be released from the bond._  
  
*  
  
“I must admit, I do not really understand your plan, Draco,” his mother murmured, staring at him in perplexity.  
  
Draco knew the words would have crushed him once. So would the cold stare coming from his father’s direction, as Lucius sat on the bed in the room they had chosen for their own and sipped his tea.  
  
But his father was going to prison. His mother had tried to make some sort of bargain with Potter, and hadn’t succeeded. His parents were never going to become Potter’s vassals of Potter’s free will, and that meant this sort of plan was the only thing Draco could try.  
  
“I already explained it to you,” Draco said, glancing from one of their faces to the other. “It’s so simple that you would scorn _me_ if _you’d_ come up with it and I said that I didn’t understand it. Why don’t you believe me?”   
  
He stopped. There was a whining tone creeping into his voice, and he knew that he wouldn’t convince his parents that he could be the savior of their family if he sounded like that. He shook his head a little and started again.  
  
“I know that the bond would sense any move I made against Potter, and would punish me if I did manage to hurt him,” he said. “Potter already proved that with Blaise. But it’s really bad at anticipating sudden actions, or I would never have been able to punch him. That means I can do this.”  
  
His father closed his eyes. His mother said, “But the potion takes time to brew. Or were you intending to buy some?”  
  
“I know where some can be found,” Draco said quietly.  
  
That made _both_ his parents pay attention to him. Draco was glad of that, at least. He raised his head, his heart hammering so fast that he knew it was probably visible in his throat, and that that would mark him as weak, but he didn’t care. What mattered was that he had a plan, finally, one that the bond shouldn’t mark out before it happened, because, after all, it would cause no physical harm to Potter. It would simply make Draco someone that Potter had to protect and value. The bond would _make_ Potter behave that way, the way it had made him act like a responsible Lord so far.  
  
“Where would it be?” his mother whispered, as if she was trying to coax the secret from him. Maybe she was, Draco thought. If there was some in the Black house, there could be other secrets here, ones that she didn’t know about and wanted to. Any weapon his parents could grasp might benefit them.  
  
Which meant that it only made sense that he should turn himself into that kind of weapon in order to save them. That they wouldn’t put him in the same category they always had, the category of someone who could save and benefit the family, was maddening.  
  
“At Hogwarts,” said Draco as calmly as he could. “I doubt that Professor Slughorn’s got rid of all of it. He was smart enough to keep his head down and survive when Death Eaters ruled the castle. He still has it.”  
  
“That still leaves the problem of how you planned to obtain it.” His mother rubbed her hands as if she was cold, and then noticed him watching her, and stopped.  
  
Draco did not smile, but he wanted to. And it would have been sadly. _They raised me to take on adult responsibilities, but they balk when I try. I don’t understand them._ “Potter let Blaise send the house-elf with a letter to his mother. He let Mrs. Zabini in the door, for Merlin’s sake. And I think the house-elf would do more favors for me, since I’m of Black blood.”  
  
His mother shut her eyes. “I should be the one who asks for it. I am a Black, through and through.”  
  
Draco peered at her. “But you don’t approve of this.” In the back of his mind lingered the suspicion that she might tell him she would ask, and then direct the house-elf to bring back some harmless potion instead.  
  
This time, she stood up. “If my own son is going to take Amortentia and then make himself that he’s in love with Potter so that Potter has no choice but to protect him,” she said starkly, “I think I should have a say at _some_ point in the process.”  
  
And she swept out of the room. Wincing a little, Draco looked at his father.  
  
“I think it a faulty plan in many respects,” his father said, softly shaking his head. “How do you know the bond won’t differentiate between real and potion-induced love? How do you know that _Potter_ will not?”  
  
“I think he’ll understand what happened,” Draco said, as calmly as he could. He turned away and paced slowly towards the fireplace to hide his pulse this time. Useless to try calling out of the fireplace, of course. It was dead to them without Floo powder, and the house-elf probably wouldn’t bring them that. “But it doesn’t matter. The bond runs on feelings, not realities, or none of us would be in this situation in the first place. And that means that Potter will be obliged to protect me, and in the meantime, I’ll be—”  
  
It took him a moment to say it. He didn’t want to. This was a desperate plan.  
  
But it was also the only plan he could come up with that would let him get close to Potter, and oblige Potter to protect his parents.  
  
“Helpless,” Draco said at last, forcing the word out. “He’ll have to bring me close, defend me more than the others, since I won’t even be able to question his decisions anymore, and I’ll think everything he does is perfect.”  
  
“If you think that,” his father murmured, “you will not question his decision to put me in prison, or beg him to bring us in as vassals under the bond.”  
  
Draco turned a smile on him that made his father give him a complicated look. Draco turned away, because he was too afraid that Lucius would see pity in that smile.  
  
“I’ll beg him,” Draco said simply. “For lots of things. It just—won’t be the same kind of begging.” He knew he was flushing, but as long as he didn’t look at his father and his father didn’t acknowledge him, he would be doing all right. “He protects the helpless, the weak. He makes a fetish of it. And the bond’ll push him to do even more. This is the best chance we have of making him agree to protect our family.”  
  
“I am surprised that you did not suggest giving the Amortentia to _him_.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “Those friends of his would realize right away what was wrong. This way, everyone knows what’s going on, but he has to do it anyway.”  
  
“And the only one sacrificed,” said his father, “is you.”  
  
Draco lifted his head and nodded, his neck feeling brittle.  
  
They didn’t look at each other again, until his mother stepped into the room and announced that she had sent the house-elf to Hogwarts, and he had gone without demur and promised to bring her back anything she wanted.  
  
Draco wiped his hands on his trousers. For a moment, his chest ached. Here he was, trying so hard to protect his parents, and his mother still had to help him.  
  
But it was all right. It would be all right as soon as he was under the influence of the potion. He would be doing his part.  
  
 _And if a sacrifice is what I have to be, then that’s what I’ll be._


	35. A Professional Meeting

"Thank you all for coming."  
  
Pansy concealed her snort. As though the members of their bond had had much choice about assembling in the kitchen when their Lord had told them that he would like to see them! The shield mark would have gone on twinging if she hadn't obeyed the summons, and she assumed that was true for the rest, too. At least, it wasn't that different from the Dark Mark in that respect.  
  
She sneaked a glance at Draco, who was pale, but sat up with bright eyes fixed on Potter. Did he know how ridiculous he looked? If this was some pose to convince Potter that he was innocent and entirely on his side right now, then he should snap out of it, because there was no reason that Potter wouldn't be suspicious of it.  
  
Blaise sat on the other side of the table, still rubbing his arm. He looked like he would rather be anywhere else, but that wasn't unusual, given what had happened to him. Pansy would have been more surprised if he had managed to hold onto an implacable mask.  
  
Professor Snape sat across from Pansy, his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes focused straight ahead. Pansy eyed him sideways. She thought there was something going on with everyone here, except her, the sensible and observing one. While she knew what it was with Blaise and what was probably going on with Draco, though--some other plan to make Potter do what he wanted and take his parents into his service as vassals--she had no idea what it could be with the professor.  
  
 _And I have to find out. He's the most dangerous of all of them._  
  
Greg sat beside Potter himself, with a smile that made Pansy want to roll her eyes. Did Potter realize that he could be his own Dark Lord if he wanted, with his very first loyal follower right there? It might be convenient for him that Greg wanted to serve him so much, but he should be more perceptive about it.  
  
"I know how to control the bond now." Potter rested his hands on the table and turned his gaze from one to the other of them. "And I can free anyone who asks for it. Or modify the bond another way, if that's what you want."  
  
Pansy narrowed her eyes. "Your meditation _succeeded,_ then?" She hadn't actually been aware that it had.  
  
"It did." Potter smiled at her, and glanced towards the doorway of the kitchen. His friends were waiting there, Pansy knew, to be convinced that no one was going to turn the tables on and hurt poor little Potter. Pansy found it obnoxious, but at least they weren't intruding right now. "So I can free you, or lighten the bond in another way."  
  
"Free me," Blaise said, at the same moment as Greg said, "Don't free me."  
  
They turned to glare at each other, but Potter seemed to have no trouble in separating their voices. He looked amused, in fact, and simply nodded. "I'll give you both what you want," he said, and turned to look at Blaise. "But you might consider remaining under the bond until the trials are done."  
  
He seemed to be saying something else with that intense eye contact and the way he leaned forwards, Pansy thought, probably about Blaise's mother. But although Blaise tightened his hands on the table, he didn't flinch or lean away. "I know that," he said. "I know it might make it easier for me, I mean. But I refuse. I want it gone _now_."  
  
"I never want it gone," Greg said, staring sideways at Blaise as if he thought that Potter really _needed_ him as a counterweight.  
  
Potter's mouth had tightened as he watched Blaise, and Pansy thought he might refuse for a moment. But either he would never have made the offer if he hadn't meant to carry it through, or else he was committed to going through with it in public. He nodded. "Fine. Give me your arm."  
  
Blaise stared at him. "What, you're going to do it right here?"  
  
"It's not the sort of thing that requires privacy," Potter said dryly. "But if you want that, I can oblige you." He stood up.  
  
"I believe I'll come with you," said Pansy, before any of the others could offer. She wasn't sure what Draco or Professor Snape would do, and Greg's presence, as obsessively loyal, would irritate Blaise right now. She stood up and smiled at Potter. "Just to make sure that the sudden absence of a bond doesn't make Blaise think he can make do with a sudden absence of _you_."  
  
"I wouldn't attack him for freeing me," Blaise said, voice low, looking at Pansy the way he had when he'd thought _she'd_ been responsible for his detention from Slughorn in sixth year.  
  
"I don't know that we can be certain of that," Pansy said, and gave him a nice smile. When she looked at Potter again, he was smiling back at her. He gestured ahead, down the corridor and away from the kitchen, and Pansy followed him. After a second's hesitation, Blaise followed as well.  
  
It did mean that Potter's friends had to jump out of the way as they swept past, but Pansy counted that as a bonus.  
  
*  
  
Blaise clenched his arm against his chest and told himself not to hope.  
  
There was every chance that this would fail because Potter didn't have as good a control of his bond as he thought he did. He might even end up with Blaise more tightly bound. Or he might pretend to free him and keep some kind of "light guiding rein" on him so that he could still control Blaise's actions and thoughts.   
  
Or, maybe, he might free him, and Blaise's mother might still refuse to come back and accept him because he would have been tainted in her eyes.  
  
Blaise swallowed. He couldn't anticipate exactly what his mother would do, he reminded himself. There was no one in the world who was as bad at understanding her as he was, except perhaps her own father. He had thought that she would want him to fight free, and then to come with her, and he had been wrong on both counts. Even freeing himself from her, as Potter and Professor Snape both insisted he had done, might not be the best strategy, because that meant he had thought of her as a master and himself as a slave.  
  
Hadn't she raised him not to think that way? Only the weakness that infected his mind and his morals and made him rightful and easy prey for someone like Potter had made him susceptible to it in the first place.  
  
He became aware that someone had dropped back to walk beside him, and looked up into Pansy's eyes. She gave him a faint smile and said, "You can do anything you want. Even walk out of this house and into the arms of the Aurors, since you won't be part of this bond anymore and the Lord's Word won't apply to you. Except one thing."  
  
"I told you, I'm not going to attack Potter," Blaise hissed. He saw Potter's head tilt ahead of them, and knew he was listening. Another reason to hate Pansy for bringing up this conversation right now.  
  
"Right," said Pansy, with a nod. "I just thought it might be easier for you to refrain if you knew that _both_ of us are against it."  
  
Blaise gave her a glare, and walked faster.  
  
They reached the room Potter must have had in mind, one of those sitting rooms with a large fireplace and uncomfortable furniture. Potter turned around near the hearth and looked directly into Blaise's face. "You're sure that you want to go through with this?"  
  
Blaise squared his shoulders. "I never would have asked if I wasn't sure."  
  
Potter looked him in the eye long enough that Blaise thought he might have to insist, and then nodded and closed both his own eyes. For a second, he swayed on his feet, as though he was going to need someone to catch hold of. Blaise took a prudent step back so Potter wouldn't decide _he_ was the perfect support.  
  
Potter lifted his hands and held them a few inches apart. Blaise stared. Between them, something was growing, something that glowed and shone like sea-foam. It had the look of a chain for a second, with separate links, and then the links spun out into a glassy rope. Potter gripped it, the muscles in his arms bunching.  
  
He struggled with it. Blaise cradled his arm and told himself that he had been right not to hope.  
  
"I am master here," Potter said, his voice quiet, intense, and the kind of thing that would have made Blaise bristle instinctively, except that he could tell Potter wasn't addressing him. "I do not care what you want. I am _Lord_." And he brought his hands down, the spinning, transparent cord between them, and broke it against his knee.  
  
Blaise gasped as fire leaped to life along his arm, white flames that did not burn his skin, but concentrated on the shield mark. They lined it, dancing up and down, rising and falling in precise spikes. Then they moved inwards, skittering along the polished silver surface as though it provided a road for them.  
  
They obliterated it. Blaise lifted his arm and tilted it back and forth, staring at the new skin where the shield had been.  
  
"There." Potter opened his eyes, and this time he did sway on his feet. Pansy moved forwards to interpose herself between Potter and Blaise, her face watchful. Potter only smiled at Blaise dopily, as though he didn't know why in the world Blaise would want to hurt him. "I did what I promised."  
  
"Just because you burned the shield mark off doesn't mean the bond is gone," Blaise whispered. "For all I know, you could do that to any of us if you wanted, to disguise what kind of bond we're joined in with you."  
  
But he knew the difference for himself. He tilted his arm back and forth, and it wasn't as heavy as it had been with the shield mark on it. He shook his head. He had grown so used, so soon, to that faint weight. If it had endured longer, would he have grown used to the essential corruption that it imposed?  
  
"I'll firecall the Aurors," Pansy said, abruptly stealing Blaise's attention from his arm. "They need to put you somewhere else, since you can't stay here with us anymore." She moved off.  
  
Blaise opened his mouth to ask why _she_ needed to do it like a house-elf, if Potter wasn't capable of the minor exertion of tossing Floo powder into a fire and calling out, but he understood when he looked up. Potter sat braced on a chair, his head in his hands, his body trembling all over. Asserting his will over the bond hadn't been an easy thing.  
  
Blaise started to say something in thanks, then halted. Potter was the one who had enslaved him in the first place. Had his mother thanked her Lord father for being more interested in his vassals than in her? He didn't think so.  
  
Potter looked up after a few minutes and nodded to Blaise. "Pansy was exaggerating the toll of it," he murmured, and stood. "I'll let the Aurors know why you need to be moved. I can't promise that the holding cell will be much more comfortable, but at least you don't have a blood-ghost hunting you, and the Freedom Fighters have no reason to go after you." He gave Blaise a faint smile. "Good luck."  
  
And he walked out of the room.  
  
Blaise stared after him. Where was the attempt to make him feel guilty? He knew that Gryffindors, and Lords, did that sort of thing, and even if Potter hadn't been the kind of person to do it before the bond, surely he would have been transformed into the sort he did it since.  
  
Of course, he had never interacted much with Potter when they were both at school, or with Gryffindors in general for that matter. And the person he had absorbed the most information about Lords from was...  
  
His mother.   
  
Blaise shut his eyes and sat down very abruptly on the couch behind him. It wasn't comfortable, but at the moment, he couldn't care about that. It bore him, and that was all he wanted for right now.  
  
He buried his head in his hands. He had to decide whether he was going back to her or not, if she would accept someone who had once been tainted by the brand of enslavement, even though he didn't carry that brand right now.  
  
But the snapping of the bond hadn't been difficult only for Potter. He needed these moments to tremble, and sit, and _breathe_.  
  
*  
  
The bond felt so _empty_.  
  
Harry shook his head again and again. He had had a floating circle of five people around his head, just minutes ago. Or was it hours? He had to admit that his head was ringing and it felt as though he had released Blaise days in the past, instead of only minutes.  
  
But now one of them was gone. Now he only had four.  
  
 _You should be pleased about that. Pleased that someone, at least, is going to get to go free._  
  
And he was, Harry told himself sternly. As pleased as he could be when it was still ringing through him, that huge, obliterating shock that made him want to give thanks and empty his belly at the same time.  
  
"Potter?"  
  
It took Harry a long time to realize that someone outside his head, outside the ringing of the bond, was trying to attract his attention, and then an even longer time to look up. He finally bit his lip, savagely, and managed to still some of the ringing. His vision wavered, telling him that two Draco Malfoys stood in front of him, but then they steadied and resolved into one.  
  
"What do you want?" Draco flinched a little, and Harry wished he had made his voice more gracious, but this was one of the worst times that Draco could have come up to him to beg Harry about his parents being made vassals. The mood Harry was in, with the _wrongness_ of someone being gone, he might give in and do it.  
  
"I wanted to ask you," Draco said. "One last time. If you would make my parents your vassals and then do your best to protect my father."  
  
"I'll do my best to make sure that he isn't executed," Harry said. "I think that he'll be put in prison along with everyone else, now that the Ministry doesn't have control of the Dementors."   
  
Draco exhaled and shoved his hands in his pockets, as if that would keep Harry from noticing how much they trembled. "Not good enough," he whispered.  
  
"Frankly, I don't know what _would_ be good enough for you," Harry snapped back, his hand clasping nothingness. He had reached out towards the empty place in the bond, forgetting for a moment that he wouldn't be able to touch anything even if Blaise was still there. "There's nothing I can do. I'm not going to make your father my vassal because the bond would compel me to defend him, probably to drag him out of prison, and that would involve putting all of my _other_ vassals in danger. Besides. He deserves to go to prison."  
  
Draco's eyes came back to him. "Why? He hasn't done a thing that you didn't do. I know you used the Unforgivables--"  
  
"Tried to feed a teenage girl's soul to an evil diary," Harry snapped. "Broke out of Azkaban. Took the Dark Mark. Tortured Muggles--"  
  
"So it makes a difference that the people you tortured are wizards?" Draco snapped back, but his cheeks were pale.  
  
"I'm not saying that," Harry said. "I'm saying that he committed plenty of crimes, and someone might want to try and keep him out of Azkaban, but it's not going to be me."  
  
Draco stared at him, eyes dilated and cheeks pale. Harry waited for some reprimanding burn from the bond, but there was nothing. Maybe it thought Draco was going too far in trying to command Harry to take on a few more vassals.   
  
Or maybe the bond was showing his own magical exhaustion after freeing Blaise. Maybe he wouldn't be feeling anything much from his remaining vassals for a while, because the bond needed time to recover. Harry shook his head. He didn't know the "real" answer, but he did know that he needed to rest.  
  
"You'll regret this," Draco said, so much promise in his voice that Harry reached for his wand, before remembering he didn't have it. But then Draco turned and walked away, almost running as he passed up the corridor and into the distance. A second later, Harry heard the wild clattering of his feet on the stairs.  
  
Harry spent a second standing there with his head in his hands, just because he felt so sorry for himself. Then he went in search of Ron and Hermione. They were the only people now who might make him feel better about himself rather than worse.  
  
*  
  
"Draco, what happened?"  
  
Draco only shook his head in response to the concern in Narcissa's voice. "I can't talk about it right now, Mother," he said, his throat tight. "What are you reading?" he added, in what he knew was a transparent attempt to change the subject.  
  
His mother watched him steadily for a second, then held the book up and showed him the cover. _Of Lords and Their Vassals._ "I thought it might provide us with a little more perspective on the bond," she murmured. "Specifically, whether it would actually protect your father that much to become part of one."  
  
"Of course it would," Draco said, turning away with a shake of his head that probably didn't look as condemning as he'd meant it to be. "Of course Potter would be forced to do at _least_ as much as he has for the rest of us if Father was one of his vassals." He tightened his fists, and controlled the impulse to lash out with a foot at the wall. "He even took care of Blaise and gave him whatever he wanted, and Blaise tried to _kill_ him."  
  
"So did your father."  
  
Draco turned around and stared at her. His mother met his eyes and sighed. "I do not wish to see Lucius waste away in Azkaban any more than you do, Draco. But I have tried to search for other alternatives, and I do not believe they exist. Lucius getting a fair trial would at least improve his chances in not being sentenced to death immediately. If your father agrees to go along quietly, then I have no doubt that Potter will deliver that testimony." She frowned and added thoughtfully, "Perhaps he will not provide it happily, but he was the one who made the bargain. I believe he will honor it."  
  
Draco bit his lip savagely. "I told you I had a different plan," he whispered. "Has Kreacher come back with the potion yet?"  
  
His mother looked him in the eye for so long that Draco opened his mouth to question her, wondering if Kreacher had perhaps been caught, although with the chaos in Hogwarts at the moment, he should have been able to sneak in. But then his mother stood up, walked over to the table beside the bed, and withdrew a key from a small drawer. She unlocked the drawer beneath it and took out the bottle of golden liquid, extending it to Draco.  
  
Draco took it and unstoppered it. Yes, Amortentia still smelled the way it always had to him, like sweat and freedom. He looked up at his mother. "And I _know_ that you have a photograph of Potter, so I can look at it and make sure that I fall in love with him that way."  
  
His mother produced one of the latest editions of the _Daily Prophet,_ still watching him steadily.  
  
Draco took the paper from her and turned so that he could look into Potter's eyes. There was a good photograph of him there, staring defiantly up at the Wizengamot. Draco bit the corner of his lip. Most of the time, you fell in love with someone who _gave_ you Amortenia. He'd read of cases where it happened after swallowing it and looking at the person in question, but this was a bit further from the beaten path than he was comfortable with.  
  
But he could wait until he was _comfortable_ with Potter sending his father to prison, which was never, or he could go ahead and do something about it now.  
  
After another glance at the photograph to make sure he was holding it at exactly the right height, he tilted back the vial and swallowed as much of the potion as he could get into his mouth at one time.  
  
He promptly choked. It tasted like salted honey, instead of the sweetness he had read in some books was the potion's natural taste, or the blandness it had after being mixed with an unsuspecting target's water. There was no reason for it to burn like that going down. Draco knew it hadn't been mixed with anything, so it should have been pure honey.  
  
He clawed at his throat with one hand for a second, and then opened his eyes and fixed them as steadily as he could on Potter's photograph.  
  
He felt as if he was falling, tumbling forwards, and then something caught him and tugged him back. There was a harsh burning in his throat and stomach, like bile. Draco licked his lips and panted in bewilderment. What the hell was going _on_?  
  
He turned to his mother, who watched him without moving. Then she closed her eyes, and Draco wondered for one instant if she had decided that he was too much trouble, if she and his father had somehow conspired to poison him--  
  
But the burning in his throat and head vanished, and Draco stood there panting. He looked at Narcissa. "It didn't work," he whispered, even as he fastened his eyes on Potter's photograph to be sure. No, he had no impulse to fall at his feet and worship him.  
  
"I thought it might not," his mother said calmly. "The bond--"  
  
Someone flung the door open before Draco could understand what she was saying, and Potter stormed in, his hair flying out on his head like trails of lightning and his eyes wild. He was clutching his right arm as though it pained him.  
  
"The bond just shrieked at me like you were dying," he snapped at Draco. "What the _hell_ were you doing to yourself?"  
  



	36. What Family Means

"The  _fuck_ did you think you were doing?"  
  
Draco would have made some snide comment about how Potter was so upset that he wasn't even speaking his sentences correctly, but he found his eyes falling and his cheeks heating up as Potter stalked around him. It didn't help that the bond mark on his arm kept throbbing and glowing, sending a twinge of heat up to his shoulder every now and then.   
  
Draco glared at it.  _I already blush with my face, I don't need to blush with my arm as well!_  
  
"I'm still waiting for an answer, Draco."  
  
That combination, of the flat tone, and his first name, and Potter's bloody  _assurance_ that he had the right to call Draco by his first name like that and scold him like a child, finally kindled the anger Draco needed to sustain his replies. He glared at Potter in turn. "You'll go on waiting," he told him. "I don't owe you an answer."  
  
Potter stared at him with eyes that could be described as black. Draco flinched, but said nothing. Potter wasn't actually Professor Snape or the Dark Lord, and Draco had survived both of those.  
  
"I felt as if you were dying," Potter said tightly. "It was the same sensation I had through the bond when Blaise was in danger from his mother. You are  _ridiculous_ if you tried to poison yourself because you thought it was better than living with the bond. If you feel that bad, then you should have come to me, and we could have talked about it."  
  
Draco paused, his head cocked. If Potter thought that was what had happened, then maybe Draco could get away with lying to him after all. And it would even be a superior lie to the Amortentia one, since Potter would have known what had happened right away if Draco took a love potion.  
  
"I've already talked to you about it," he muttered, making his voice as fretful as he could. "You know that I don't want my father go to prison. You've refused to do the only thing that would help."  
  
Potter laughed, a little wildly. He was running on the edge of his endurance, Draco decided, watching him cautiously. Well, that was a good thing. It meant Draco was a lot more likely to get away with lying to him.  
  
"Even being my vassals won't spare the lot of you trials," Potter said. "It's likely that your father would end up going to Azkaban if I took him under my wing  _anyway_. Have you considered that?"  
  
Draco sniffed and folded his arms. "You told me you wouldn't do it because it would put your other vassals in danger. Well, not having him as part of the bond is putting  _me_ in danger. How are you going to choose between us?"  
  
There was a strange, buzzing sound. It took Draco a long second to realize that it was coming from the big shield mark on Potter's right arm. Potter laid his hand over it, and his face became frozen, immobile. Draco watched him, holding his breath. Maybe that buzz was someone else summoning Potter, because someone else who had been part of the bond was in danger, and that would give Draco time to come up with an even better lie.  
  
Potter turned towards him, and Draco braced for an announcement of the latest crisis.  
  
"You're lying," Potter said calmly. "I don't know why I'm not used to this by now. Sometimes I wonder if I should just get Severus to read the truth out of your mind instead of relying on what you say." He leaned towards Draco, his eyes hard. "Will you tell me the bloody  _truth_ for once?"  
  
Draco looked wildly around for his mother. She had departed the room, at what point he'd never noticed.  _Coward,_ he thought bitterly in her direction, and then faced Potter.  
  
"I was going to swallow Amortentia because I thought you would have to do what I wanted once I was in love with you," he said.  
  
Potter stared at him, then laughed shortly. His green eyes were maybe a little lighter, but not by much. "What? Did you think I would be fooled by seeing you suddenly acting in a completely stereotypical love potion way?"  
  
"That wasn't what this was about," Draco snapped, his cheeks aflame. "I  _knew_ that you would know I was under the influence of a love potion. I just thought--because I couldn't help worshipping you, I thought the bond would force you to do more for me than the others."  
  
Potter took a step towards him. His hands were trembling. As Draco noticed that, though, Potter promptly folded them behind his back, as though he wanted to stop Draco from noticing.  
  
"If you'd done this any other day, maybe it would be all right," Potter hissed. "But I have had  _as much as I can take_ of your bloody  _nonsense._ The bond prevented the potion from taking effect, because it thought it would harm you. You  _can't do something like that._ Can I say that only once, or is it going to take longer to penetrate that thick skull?"  
  
 _My mother knew that,_ Draco realized numbly.  _It's why she let me go ahead and take the potion. She probably realized from all the reading she'd done exactly what would happen._  
  
"I can't just do nothing," Draco heard himself say, his mouth moving without his permission. "You're going to put my father in  _prison_ , and you want me to just give up and do nothing about it? Of course I won't! Of course I'm going to fight for him!" Potter's eyes were almost black again, and the shield mark on his arm was buzzing, and Draco added defensively, "And if that bothers you, well, sorry, but maybe it's just because you never had a family yourself--"  
  
Potter snarled at him, and the bond mark on his arm heated up so much that Draco winced and stepped back from Potter. Only the knowledge that the bond would never let Potter hurt him kept Draco from retreating from the room altogether.  
  
"That's stupid." Potter was speaking the words like slow drops of water falling into a well. "I don't know what else I can say to convince you of how bloody  _stupid_ this is. Yes, I do understand that you want to fight for your father. But  _nothing_ is going to keep him out of prison. Unless someone kills him first! He has a better chance this way than--"  
  
"He would have a better chance as your vassal, and you won't do it!" Draco folded his arms and stared Potter down.  
  
"No, he  _wouldn't_ ," Potter said. "Because I would be splitting my efforts between so many people at once that he wouldn't receive a good defense, and neither would the rest of you. Why can't you  _understand_ that? What else can I say to convince your stubborn arse? He would drag the rest of you down, and my first loyalty is to the people already in the bond!"  
  
"But you could save him," Draco said. "You could do something. I know that you've freed Blaise, so that way you have an empty place that you could offer to Father, and you don't know exactly what the bond is capable of yet."  
  
"I had to know exactly what it was capable of to free Blaise," Potter snapped. "What, you think I could have done that with imperfect control?"  
  
"You could still do something," Draco said. "You killed the Dark Lord and initiated this bond in the first place. You could do something."  
  
He stopped, because Potter was shaking, and it really did look as if magic was making him vibrate from the inside. Draco backed cautiously away. What had his mother been thinking, to leave him here with someone this unstable? He was going to complain bitterly to her about her lack of care for him once he found her again.  
  
*  
  
 _The little fucker. The arrogant little bastard._  
  
Harry wanted to go away and calm down, but he knew that he would probably just explode at whoever he saw then, and he wanted to stay here and deal with this. Draco was the one who had put him into this much of a temper. Draco was the one who could bloody well deal with it.  
  
"Just because I did those things doesn't mean I can do  _anything_ ," he said, in enough of a hiss that it made Draco flinch and Harry wonder for a second if he'd spoken Parseltongue. But Draco was still looking at him as if he understood, so probably not. "Your mother came to me and had the same stupid plan. I'm the hero, I should figure a way out! Except I did what I did with a lot of help, and I don't know what to do this time, and my vassals keep making it harder than it should be with their stupid antics!"  
  
"Wanting to save my father isn't stupid." Up went Draco's little chin again, as though he could change reality while squinting at Harry.  
  
"It is when you have no plan and you think I should do something even though there's nothing to do!" Harry shouted right back. The expression on Draco's face didn't change, and Harry almost walked away. He couldn't get through to Draco no matter what he did, so why should he try?  
  
But he controlled the impulse with a grinding of his teeth and a restraint that impressed even him, and inclined his head sharply instead. "How do you propose that we keep your father out of prison and away from the consequences of his actions?"  
  
"You take him as your vassal." Draco gave him a pitying look.  
  
That broke Harry's self-control again. He felt a sharp sensation in the shield mark, but it didn't seem as if it was discouraging him from snapping at Draco. "But I can't even keep  _you_  out of prison, maybe! Or Snape! And you didn't do as much as he did!"  
  
"Snape did. He was a Death Eater just like my father." This time, Draco gave a little snort, evidently because he wanted to make himself as irritating as possible to someone who was trying to help him.  
  
"But he didn't break out of  _bloody Azkaban!_ " Harry threw his arms up and turned away to pace, because he recognized the edge of his temper. It was the same way he had sometimes felt around Dudley when he was younger, so angry that he was going to punch him no matter what happened next. "Your father would still be on trial for  _that_ even if all his actions had the same explanation as Snape's!"  
  
"If he was a spy," Draco began.  
  
Harry turned around and stared. " _That's_ your grand plan? To pretend that he was and under Dumbledore's protection?" He snorted. "Good luck forging the Pensieve memories."  
  
Draco bristled and glared at him. "I didn't say it would work if I did it myself! I just meant that you could lie, and they would believe you because you're the Boy-Who-Lived and you  _always_ get special treatment!"  
  
Harry began walking forwards. Draco began backing away from him, until both of them had to stop because Harry had literally backed Draco into a corner. Harry loomed close to him and glared down at Draco. They were both about the same height, he thought, but Draco was cowering before him now, and Harry had the moral high ground to stand on, whether or not Draco would ever acknowledge that.  
  
"The Wizengamot argued with me," Harry whispered. "I barely managed to persuade them of anything. They're spreading stories and lies about me, the same way that they did in school." He laughed wildly, and without knowing what the effect of his laughter on Draco would be, until he saw the pink splotches on his white cheeks and his wide eyes. "Remember? In fourth year? So many people believed I was lying about putting my name in the Goblet of Fire to become the Tri-Wizard Champion? You helped Skeeter write her articles then. And two years ago, they thought I was insane, and there were a bunch of people who at least went along with the idea that I was a wanted criminal for the last year! Yes, of course they all support me and give me special treatment." He whipped away from Draco. "If you were counting on me being invincible to save your family, you shouldn't have hacked away at my invincibility."  
  
"You could do all these other things," Draco whispered to his back. "Killing the Dark Lord was harder than saving my father. Why can't you do this?"  
  
"Because your definition of  _saving_ means that he doesn't pay at all," Harry said without turning to look at Draco again. Maybe the idiot would learn better that way. "And no one can keep him from doing that."  
  
"He did in the first war--"  
  
"When he had a lot of money, and bribed people, and they were willing to believe him," Harry said. "That excuse won't fly this time. And even then, he spent some time in prison, didn't he? I've got a nice prison for him right now, better than the holding cells. You ought to thank me for all I've already done for him."  
  
"That's an idea!" Draco sounded as though he'd had a revelation. Harry turned to eye him warily over his shoulder. Draco clasped his hands together and gave Harry a bright look. "Why don't you make him a vassal and demand that they release him into your custody? House arrest! We could do that!"  
  
"Because I don't want to be responsible for house arrest on Lucius bloody Malfoy," Harry said, in a low voice.  
  
Draco stared at him. "But I need it to be happy, and doesn't the bond force you to do what your vassals need to be happy?" he demanded incredulously.  
  
"No," Harry said, after a pause in which he thought it possible that the bond might contradict him. But nothing happened, and Harry grew more confident after a second. "I don't have to spend the rest of my life doing nothing but things you want. I don't think the bond can work that way. Lords would get fed up and kill themselves after a few days if they got nothing out of the bond."  
  
"You get the ability to command us--"  
  
"Because that's been really fucking useful and stopped you doing stupid things really well so far," Harry said sourly, and kicked the empty vial of Amortentia where it lay on the floor.  
  
A flood of color traveled up into Draco's cheeks, but he still didn't retreat. "You get a lot out of this bond. And we didn't choose this bond any more than you did. Rescuing my father seems like the least you could do."  
  
Harry uttered a short, frustrated scream, and stalked towards Draco again. Draco didn't cower this time, but he did fold his arms and tilt his head up in a peculiar way when Harry wasn't far off, and that might mean the same thing. It made Harry stop short and snap out the next words that he might have kept hidden forever, at least.  
  
"What do I get out of this bond? Short sleep, constant worry, the fact that I don't understand Lordship bonds and I'm always at a disadvantage, people expecting me to be a hero, people telling me that I'm no better than a slaveowner, people trying to  _kill_ me, vassals who do stupid shit and try to kill me, vassals who punch me, vassals who try to take love potions, responsibility that never ends, the main responsibility for defending the house even though I don't have a wand, more people coming up and staring hopefully at me, responsibility for _adults_ placed on my shoulders, and accusations of selfishness and cowardice and wanting the bond from every direction! Yes, I did this because I  _so wanted_ this bond. Yes, my position as Lord is so enviable!"  
  
Draco had paled again, but he just watched him instead of saying anything, so Harry went on with his rant. "And if I do want something, I get told it's selfish, too. Well, fuck you very much, Draco Malfoy. I  _refuse_ to save your father, who's apparently so weak that his idea of doing something is to cast himself at my feet and then lie there trembling. And I  _refuse_ to give in to your pleadings, when you wouldn't give a shit if one of my friends or one of my family were the ones going to prison. I don't care. I don't have to care about anyone who's outside the bond, because the bond won't force me to."  
  
"If I'm unhappy," Draco whispered.  
  
"Blaise was unhappy, and I released him from the bond." Harry gave Draco a smile he knew was nasty, and he really didn't care. "So that's always an option."  
  
"I wouldn't survive the trials free if you did that." Draco locked his arms around himself and stood there looking lost and miserable and sorry for himself. "You can't do that. The bond will force you not to."  
  
"There is literally nothing else I can do," Harry said. "I can't keep your father out of fucking prison, understand? Nothing can do that."  
  
"If you made him a vassal," Draco began.  
  
And there was a final snapping somewhere deep inside Harry, something that made him fly across the room and shake Draco as hard as he could, holding his shoulders. Draco's teeth snapped and shivered, and the bond didn't object.  
  
"I'm not going to do that because I don't want to," Harry said, when he could speak instead of spitting incoherently with rage. "Get it? You can talk all you want about how I should and the bond should force me to and you'd like me to and it would be right, but what it comes down to is that I don't want to. You can't make me, either."  
  
 _God, it feels good to say that._ It did. It felt good to see the utterly astonished look on Draco's face, too, while he looked Harry up and down, at a loss.  
  
"But the bond  _has_ to force you," Draco whispered. "The same way it would have forced you to if I drank the Amortentia."  
  
Harry smiled at him, and Draco flinched. "And notice that the bond kept the potion from taking effect. It stops things that put the vassals in danger. It would have reacted a lot sooner even to the kidnapping attempt if the Freedom Fighters hadn't been smart enough to use those Calming Charms on you. It also won't let you try to commit suicide or cause harm to yourself, or whatever other bloody stupid plan you've come up with next." He leaned near enough that their noses crushed together. "And you won't be able to force me with guilt, because I'm the one with the power."  
  
Draco stared at him, dazed. Harry waited. Draco finally came out with, "I never imagined--I never imagined that you would be so harsh a Lord."  
  
"I never imagined I'd have to, until people pushed me so much that it was this or just give in and do whatever you wanted." Harry pushed his glasses up his nose, not having realized until that point that they'd slipped down. His hand was shaking, and he clenched it a little and lowered it back to his side. "I don't want to hurt you. But I don't want to take on the burden of your father, either, and I'm not going to do it."  
  
Draco rubbed his shoulder, eyes so intent on Harry's face that Harry wondered if Draco thought he could convince Harry that way. "You could if you wanted to," Draco said. "But you're not going to do it."  
  
Harry sneered at him. "I could, if I made a choice that he should escape prison and he shouldn't pay for his crimes and I should do whatever I could just to spare your feelings. But that's not going to happen."  
  
"You're doing it this way because you decided to," Draco whispered. "Not because the bond made you."  
  
Harry threw up his hands again. "Yes. Believe that if you want. Believe I'm your enemy and that I could spare your father prison if I wanted, even though I'm not the Wizengamot and not even the one who can make the bloody legal decision. Just stand there and tell me like your mum that I should have done something else." He walked towards the door. He'd done his best to convince Draco, and Draco wouldn't listen, and Harry was sick of it.  
  
"Potter?"  
  
Draco's voice was so tentative that Harry hesitated with his hand on the knob. He really shouldn't listen, he told himself. He should walk out of the room and not look back. He had already given more of his time and patience to Draco than any sane person would require.   
  
But Draco's voice was a  _bit_ different, and there was a strange vibration traveling down his shield mark, like it was a glass someone had flicked with a finger. Harry turned around. "What?"  
  
*  
  
Draco felt as though a strange, glacial calm had gripped him. Potter's words seemed to echo and chase themselves around his head, but Draco only heard fragments of them at one time. What he was actually  _thinking_ was his own paraphrase of them.  
  
 _He could make the choice to take on my father under the bond, but we've used up all his goodwill. We've exhausted him. He doesn't trust us. His reputation is poor, too, and he can't shield my father all that well. He's not the one who'll decide whether my father is sent to Azkaban or not._  
  
Draco took a deep breath. He could--he could accept that. For years, he'd been thinking, endlessly, that Potter wasn't so special, and it was incredible to him that only him and Professor Snape and his father and a few other people were the ones who could see that. Why did people think it was a big deal if Potter picked his nose? Draco could prove that he broke the rules and slept and ate like anyone else, because he saw Potter doing it every day, even though Potter wasn't  _punished_ for breaking the rules anything like near as often as he deserved.  
  
And now Potter was the one telling him that Draco had been right. Potter wasn't an invincible hero. He couldn't do miracles just because people looked at him with shining eyes and demanded that he do it. Draco had become one of that mob of people staring at Potter that way and imploring him, sure that he could do it just because he was Potter, and a hero. He had forgotten the important things he'd known as a child.  
  
It would have been different if Draco had had some solid plan to save his father. But even if Lucius became a vassal, Draco had to admit, he didn't know exactly how things would work. Potter was still the one who would have to fight the battle.  
  
It also would have been different if Potter had thought he was special because he was a Lord now. But he didn't think that way, and Draco thought--he thought he could accept this tired, ordinary boy staring at him from across the room. His eyes and his shield mark and his scar and his messy hair, which so many people even in Slytherin had thought were so special, weren't that remarkable when you saw them like this, Draco thought tolerantly.  
  
He discovered that Potter was still waiting for him to say something, and he said, "All right. I don't--I don't want my father to go to prison, but--I accept that you won't do anything about it. That it would be pretty hard even if you wanted to do something about it."  
  
Potter looked at him closely. Then he said, "And you won't do anything else stupid like use Amortentia on yourself?"  
  
Draco grimaced and nodded. He didn't want to agree, but he also didn't have much choice.  
  
That smile that had startled him once before leaped across Potter's face, the one that did make him look like someone special, more than all those photographs in the paper had ever managed. "Thank you," he said simply, and left Draco alone in the room, still tired and with the lingering remnants of his anger draining towards peace.


	37. Not Willing to Take It Anymore

“Harry, mate? Are you all right? You look like you’re ready to storm the Ministry.”  
  
Harry smiled at Ron. It was surprisingly easy to do, with all the anger swirling around in the middle of his chest and making him feel as though he’d swallowed a volcano. Then again, Ron wasn’t in the bond and couldn’t be responsible for any of the things he was feeling right now.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, and opened the door to a room off to their right, not caring which one it was. He would have backed out again if it was one of the Slytherins’ bedrooms, but it was a room that might once have been a study, given the bookshelves set into the walls. They were all empty, though. Harry stepped inside, folded his arms, and turned around, leaning against the wall. “Would you mind closing the door behind you?”  
  
Ron still eyed him as he shut the door. “Someone put you in this mood?”  
  
Harry snorted. “Malfoy, yes.”  
  
Either Ron knew exactly which one, or he had simply never stopped thinking that there was more than one important person with that name. He winced. “I wish that git would realize his bloody father just has to go to prison,” he muttered.  
  
“I think he did realize it, right before I left.” Harry ran his hand through his hair, and tugged some of it straight up on purpose. He saw Ron watching him, and shrugged. “It can’t look any worse than it always does.”  
  
“I wasn’t staring at you because of  _that_ ,” Ron said. He sat down on one of the ancient chairs in the study, and wrinkled his nose when dust flew up. A quick charm banished it. “You managed to make him see sense?”  
  
“After I yelled at him about how selfish he was and how I might be able to save his father but I wasn’t going to, sure.”  
  
“Thank Merlin.” Harry blinked at Ron, who shook his head. “Hermione and I were both watching the bond wear you down more and more, but we both knew that you had so much to deal with…more criticism was the last thing you needed.”  
  
“You’re different,” Harry said quietly. “She was the one who had the idea to meditate to control the bond, and it was a good one.” He took a seat across from Ron. “It’s just a pity that I can’t meditate to think of ways to  _handle_ all of them.”  
  
Ron frowned. “But you do have a way to handle them now. Just let them go.”  
  
“I can’t do that to Greg.”  
  
Ron sighed hard enough to make Harry’s hair blow back, or at least it felt like that to Harry. “I understand that he wants to stay with you. But what about the rest of them? It would solve a lot if you could just release them.”  
  
“I could,” Harry acknowledged. For a moment, he thought about it, the peace he could have if he was only responsible for Greg and not for people who fought back and argued with him and told him he was stupid and plotted up ways to kill him.  
  
But the memory of the sudden emptiness he had felt when he released Blaise made him shake his head. “I promised to protect them, and none of them have asked me yet,” he said. “I would be surprised if Draco does, actually. He’s too terrified of what would happen if he went through the trials without any protection.”  
  
“He  _should_ ,” Ron muttered.  
  
Harry arched his eyebrows. “Then so should I. If it’s just a notion of justice, then Snape should too. And Pansy and Greg.”  
  
“You know that’s different,” Ron said, leaning forwards. “You did what you had to do to end the war, and so did Snape. Parkinson and Goyle…” He hesitated.  
  
“I don’t know enough about what they did during the war to be certain,” Harry said quietly. “I don’t think the Wizengamot will pry that much, because if they condemned them for going along with the Death Eaters in Hogwarts, they’d have to condemn a lot of people in the Ministry for going along with the Death Eaters that were in control there. And most of those people were a lot older than Pansy and Greg.” He sighed. “I suppose I should ask them in more detail about what they did just so I’ll know what we’re facing in the trials.”  
  
“But not now,” Ron said, his eyes intent. “Now you want to rest and get some sleep?”  
  
Harry nodded. “Yeah. I’d like to go flying, too, but I promised the bloody Ministry I wouldn’t leave the house. So will you and Hermione come talk to me? That’s the next best thing.”  
  
Ron pretended to scowl. “Only the next best thing, right? Not the best.”  
  
“Hey,” Harry said around a yawn, “as many things as I have to think about and do right now, you ought to be honored to have a place that high on the list.”  
  
“Maybe I’ll feel even more honored when you’ve rested and you can talk to us properly,” said Ron. He hauled Harry out of his chair, and Harry stumbled. Ron nodded. “Yeah, that was what I thought. Go rest, Great Lord. You know that you’re unable to keep up with Hermione sometimes even when you’re awake, you don’t want to try and do it when you’re asleep.”  
  
Harry gave him a glare, but sighed and stumbled off to bed. It felt like all he was doing lately was resting…  
  
But he only thought that until he remembered freeing Blaise, and meditating on the bond, and confronting Blaise’s mother, and the confrontation with Draco. All of those had occurred in less than forty-eight hours.  
  
 _Yeah, I’ve earned some sleep._  
  
*  
  
“I must speak with you, Draco.”  
  
It occurred to Severus that something had changed; Draco stood up from the kitchen table where he had been quietly talking with his parents, and came with Severus without any expression of regret or dragging of his heels. Severus narrowed his eyes. He could hope, of course, that this meant Draco was gaining in sense, but as many things as had happened so far without Draco gaining in sense, he was reluctant to grant hope that much of a concession.  
  
“What did you want to talk about?” Draco asked, when he had closed the kitchen door behind them and he and Severus were walking down a corridor that would lead to storage rooms if they kept moving this way.  
  
Severus turned around in the middle of the corridor and clasped his hands behind his back. They had come far enough for privacy’s sake, he thought, and that meant he could unleash the blast of his temper without going into another room to do so. “Stop troubling Potter about your father becoming a vassal. It lessens Potter’s ability to protect the rest of us, and though I do not like to admit it, we need him.”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows and stared at him for a second. Severus frowned. He would have thought that Draco would react with indignation, not this. But before he could speak, Draco said, “He didn’t tell you, then.”  
  
“I have not seen Potter for some hours, if that is who you are referring to,” Severus said coolly.  
  
Draco was staring at one of the walls, where an empty portrait frame hung. “I thought he would tell you,” he muttered. “That he would immediately go and share the triumph with you, because you’re the one who understands me the most…” Then he sighed, and turned back to Severus. “Maybe that was wishful thinking, but I wish he had.”  
  
“It seems to me that you possess the same information and desire of unburdening yourself to me,” Severus observed. “Why not tell me now, and that will both ease your mind and absolve Potter of the sin of not doing so?” His voice was growing waspish. He could not stand being shut out of information by the endless prevarications of someone who had all the facts already in their grasp.  
  
“Potter made it clear that he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to, as far as saving my father went.” Draco’s voice was low, his eyes staring into the distance as though he saw Potter standing there. “And then he said that even if taking Lucius as a vassal would save him, he wouldn’t do it.”  
  
Severus blinked. That was more decision than he would have expected from Potter, and he wondered if it was a move in the wrong direction, considering the dangerous unpredictability of Narcissa Malfoy. “Why did he decide to tell you that?”  
  
A blush prickled across Draco’s cheeks. “I—I wanted to force him into doing something, into making it so that my father didn’t go to prison. I thought I could use the bond against him, because if I was unhappy, then he would  _have_ to make sure that I could be happy again. And he felt it through the bond, which prevented me from harming myself, and he was really angry and yelled at me.”  
  
“What did you do?” Severus asked, and Draco looked down at the floor and traced his foot in a circle.  
  
“I was going to take Amortentia, and then he would know that I was in love with him and helpless with it and he would have to do what I wanted.”  
  
Severus turned his head away and paced to the far end of the corridor. He was himself risking Narcissa’s anger if he stayed near Draco, and perhaps Potter’s as well, considering that he wanted to wring Draco’s neck.  
  
“You thought that would work,” he said, and perhaps because he had so many emotions fighting in him for dominance, he heard his voice come out flat, not disapproving, the way that he wanted to make it.  
  
“I knew it would,” said Draco. “It wouldn’t matter if he knew it was false. What mattered was that he would have to do what I wanted.”  
  
“You cannot use a Lordship bond against the Lord,” Severus said, and began counting the small spots on the wall in front of him, which looked like chips and burn marks, to calm himself down. “You would think that someone raised as pure-blood as you would know that.”  
  
“I’ve already seen that he forgave Blaise and reversed the bond’s punishment of him,” Draco mumbled. “I know that he doesn’t think like a Lord most of the time. I thought I could do it.”  
  
Severus turned back to him. “He has forgiven you again this time?” It was the most urgent thing to know at the moment. If he didn’t know it, then he might make a wrong move where either Draco or Potter was concerned.  
  
“He did,” Draco said. “After I admitted that I knew he couldn’t save my father, and he wasn’t going to, and that means—” He choked a little. “That means that Father will be going to Azkaban.” He whispered the last words, as if that were a charm that might still make it not come true.  
  
“It does,” Severus said. “And as long as Potter has forgiven you and you have made it clear that you won’t oppose him anymore, then this is perhaps the best thing that could happen.”  
  
Draco glared at him. “I know that you don’t have much pity for Father—have no reason to pity him—but I did think that you might remember that I don’t have any reason to want my father in prison.”  
  
Severus looked at him, and remembered that he had always wondered how Draco would grow out of the shadow of his father. As long as Lucius was alive and free, he would always be there for Draco to compare himself to.  _Lucius_ was the Malfoy of Malfoy Manor, the one in charge of the vaults and the responsibility, and Draco might learn to manage them, but he would not carry off the same reputation and grandeur if he had to wait years and years to cast his own light.  
  
But that was not the kind of thing that Severus could say to one of his Slytherins who looked the way Draco did. “If you are not about to cause some kind of crisis,” he said, “then I am going to go up and talk to Potter.”  
  
Draco abruptly grinned. “You can try, but Granger is going to turn you away the same way she turned me away, this morning.”  
  
“Granger doesn’t have anything to say about it,” Severus snapped, and then moderated his voice a little. He didn’t like Draco’s grin, but that was no reason to make him cower. “She’s not part of the bond.”  
  
“No, but she’s Potter’s most  _vocal_ friend.” Draco turned away, then added over his shoulder, “I won’t make more trouble. I just want to enjoy my father’s company for however long it is before the trials begin.”  
  
Severus watched the kitchen door shut behind Draco again with narrowed eyes. Perhaps he was adapting better to the situation than Severus had thought. For him to speak like that, smile like that, and say that Potter had forgiven him…  
  
But there were still things Severus needed to speak with Potter about, things that did not concern Draco at all, and he turned towards the stairs.  
  
*  
  
Harry stretched luxuriously. He had a pillow behind his neck, another under his back, another beneath his arse, and he didn’t even know how many behind his head, propping him up and making him comfortable. A thick, red blanket that Kreacher had dragged out from somewhere and severely dusted draped him from neck to toes. And he had a steaming breakfast in front of him, which included scones drizzled with butter and honey.  
  
He reached for the tray, and then paused. His arm had throbbed, a little, and there were footsteps in the corridor beyond the bedroom door.  
  
Then Hermione’s voice, friendly and bright, said, “Sorry, but you can’t go in there.”  
  
“I will go where I please.” That was Snape, his voice so deep that he made it sound as if he was about to give Hermione detention.  
  
But they weren’t in Hogwarts, and Harry had seen during the last year that Hermione had changed a lot from the girl who would have automatically cowered from that voice. He slapped two scones together like a sandwich and started to eat them, grinning.  
  
“Not into this bedroom,” said Hermione. “Harry’s had enough trouble from the whole pack of you. You’ll see him when he wants to speak with you, and not before.”  
  
“But you don’t understand.” Snape’s voice had become soft and insinuating, and Harry frowned. He had to admit, he didn’t really know how Hermione would handle this one. “If one of us was injured, or otherwise needed him…”  
  
“Then he would come out,” Hermione said promptly. “But if you’re thinking of injuring yourself so that he’d have to come out and you could talk to him, well, I suggest you talk to Malfoy about that. He had that bright idea, too.”  
  
Harry saluted Hermione with his scone-sandwich and deliberately bit into it as hard as he could, drizzling everything all over the tray, because he wanted to.  
  
“This is not over,” Snape said at last, when Harry had actually thought he’d gone away, except that he hadn’t heard the retreating footsteps.  
  
“I’m sure that it isn’t,” Hermione said. “After all, you still have the bond with him. But one thing you really have to remember is that Harry can’t be saving you all the time, especially saving you from yourselves. Sometimes you’ll just have to come up with solutions on your own.”  
  
“He was the one who,” Snape began, and then there was a pause, and then this time, Harry  _did_ hear the retreating footsteps.  
  
Harry snickered into his hand. He thought Snape had probably been about to say that Harry was the one who’d killed Voldemort and initiated the bond, and then he’d realized that that sounded like he was acknowledging Harry was a hero. And he’d always tried not to do that. So he’d retreated.  
  
“Harry, are you decent?” Hermione called, rapping on the door.  
  
Harry resisted the impulse to smear honey on his face or something, and called, “Yeah, Hermione,” rolling his eyes.  
  
Hermione came in and nodded at him. “Snape wanted—”  
  
“I heard,” Harry said. “And thank you for sending him away. I’m not in the mood to deal with anyone from the bond right now.”  
  
“Good thing that I’m not in the bond, then,” Hermione said, with the sort of bossiness that made Harry love her, and set her hands on her hips. “Do you know what you want to do next?”  
  
“Sit in bed, and read, and sleep some more,” Harry said, and sucked honey off his finger to see her wince. Then he felt a little bad about that, but it sounded like she was trying to make him get up and move around, and he didn’t want to do that again. “I need more recovery time, Hermione. Really. I didn’t realize how close to the edge they’d got me until I almost hurt Draco yesterday.”  
  
She frowned at him. “I don’t think that you would actually have hurt him. The bond would have prevented you from doing that, wouldn’t it?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Harry held his hands out to her pleadingly. “I meditated, sure, but that wasn’t very relaxing. I need a day off. Can you do that for me?” He heard the whine in his voice and cut himself off, wincing. It would do less than no good if he worked himself up about this when he was in the middle of trying to calm down.  
  
Hermione softened and shook her head at him. “I would never try to make you do something you didn’t want to,” she murmured. “I just thought the bond would probably pull you out of seclusion before then.” She sighed. “Why don’t you stay up here for today? Ron and I will be on guard for now.”  
  
“Make sure that you get some time to yourselves, too,” Harry said.  
  
“As you put it, we’re not part of the bond, so you don’t need to worry about us as much.”  
  
“If you don’t take care of yourselves, then you’ll get sick or something, and I’ll worry about that  _on top_ of everything else,” Harry said, shuddering a little. “No, thanks.”  
  
Hermione laughed reluctantly and turned towards the door. “I suppose Kreacher can bring you everything you need?”  
  
“Yeah.” Harry touched the shield mark on his arm. “And I think this would let me know if something urgent really was going on and the people in the bond needed me.”  _The people still in the bond._ The place where Blaise had been didn’t feel as empty as it had been yesterday, but it still ached a little, like a long-ago tumble from his broom.  
  
“Good,” Hermione said, and smiled at him over her shoulder. “You totally deserve to have some time alone, by the way. I just hope that you can actually use it to rest and not just read.”  
  
“ _You’re_ saying that?” Harry asked, and pretended to reach for his wand as if he was going to cast a detection charm, before he remembered that he didn’t have it.  
  
Hermione laughed again and shut the door, and Harry went back to enjoying his breakfast.  
  
*  
  
It had taken Pansy longer than she’d thought it would to track down Professor Snape. Then again, he seemed to barely eat regular meals or sleep, and he had no interest in the library, maybe because Potter and Greg, and now Blaise, were spending a lot of their time there. She finally came across him in one of the ground floor sitting rooms, his fingers clasped beneath his chin as he stared into the fire.  
  
She blinked a little before she shut the door behind her.  _I suppose that some of the theories we made up about what he got up to in his rooms at night were actually accurate._  
  
“We need to decide what we’re going to do about Draco and the bond,” she said briskly, when he turned a startled face towards her.  
  
“If you mean that Draco is going to turn against Potter, you need not worry about that,” Professor Snape said, without turning a hair. “They have talked, and Potter forgave him and managed to make him see the truth.”  
  
“What truth?” Pansy folded her arms. She had to admit, Professor Snape sounded less lively than she liked. He was going to brood about this and make this into something more complex than it needed to be, perhaps. “Draco will never give up on his stupid notion that his father needs to go free.”  
  
Professor Snape turned so she could see one of his eyes. “Potter made him give up on it.” Then he added softly, “But not alone.”  
  
“Did one of his friends help persuade Draco?” Pansy finally gave in to the fact that she would be here for a while, and took one of the chairs next to Professor Snape. “I find it hard to imagine that  _that_ would go well.”  
  
Professor Snape’s lip curled. “No, it would not. What happened was that I believe the bond pushed Draco into this acquiescence.”  
  
“Why?” Pansy looked down at the shield mark on her own arm, which hadn’t bothered her for a while. “It doesn’t seem to do that kind of thing very often.”  
  
“Because he changed his mind, and he changed it when Potter was angry at him, and frustrated with him.” Professor Snape again looked at the fire. “Now, it may be for the best, because there is no way that Potter could defend his parents, and it was time Draco recognized that. But I wonder what will happen if  _Draco_ realizes that.”  
  
Pansy spent a minute thinking about that. But she wasn’t that interested in Draco if the problems he was causing had stopped. She was more interested in herself. “Do you think the bond can push us like that, too?” she asked.  
  
“I am certain of it.”  
  
Professor Snape stood up and turned to face her. Pansy clenched her hands on the arms of the chair, but didn’t stand. She didn’t want to show she was intimidated, which standing up would probably do.  
  
“I believe that the bond has already made me less suicidal and more accepting of having a master,” Professor Snape went on. “Take care that it does not deprive you of the political ambitions I understand are important to you.”  
  
Pansy set her jaw. “I would fight it if that happened.”  
  
“You may not have a chance to,” whispered Professor Snape, his voice so low that it frightened Pansy. “The bond is in your mind and spirit, and you may not be able to tell the difference between it and the promptings of your own instinct and conscience. If you wanted to do something, would you know if you always had that desire or not? How many of us closely monitor our own memories?”  
  
Pansy laughed. She didn’t mean to, but the sound jerked out before she could clasp a hand to her mouth. Professor Snape stared at her.  
  
“I’m sorry, sir,” Pansy said quickly. “But if you can’t tell the difference between the bond and your own thoughts, and you can’t remember whether you used to have that desire or not, then how do you know you’re  _not_ acting against your own thoughts? It seems to me that if you can’t tell the difference, you might as well just assume that you’re following your own instincts, and accept them.”  
  
Professor Snape stood there for a second. Then he said, “You are a  _child_ ,” and swept out.  
  
Pansy was left alone to look into the fire.  
  
 _A child, maybe. But someone who’s going to be happier than he ever will, because I accept what I need to do to survive._


	38. Pinned and Struggling

_How much time have I spent alone in my mind, thinking about the past, brooding on my memories, strengthening my Occlumency shields before an audience with the Dark Lord?_  
  
The words echoed and drummed through Severus’s head like lightning running before thunder, but he continued breathing slowly, easily, and didn’t look up from the book in his lap. If someone came into the library, they would think that he was either reading intensely or asleep. Either way, Severus hoped, they would hesitate to disturb him.   
  
He had begun to think about the bond and its influence on his mind, and to loathe it. Neither his debt to Dumbledore nor the Mark that bound him to the Dark Lord had ever controlled him this way.  
  
On the other hand, he did not have to simply give in and go along with it like the tame bird that it seemed Miss Parkinson had become. He had the ability to control his thoughts, to keep them from being read. That should mean that he also had the ability to keep them from being influenced.  
  
Severus had engaged himself to try a particular tactic that he had read descriptions of many times but never attempted. He had never had a reason to use it. The tactic was for people who wanted to see their thoughts from the outside, and Severus had been content to spend his time in the middle of them. He knew that sometimes he was unfair or prejudiced, but did he not have  _reason?_ He was not interested in the outside view.  
  
But now, he wanted to distinguish between himself and the bond. So he waited until the rush of thoughts had passed through his head and slowed a bit, and until he was sitting so still that he could feel the beat of his heart rocking his body, as he swayed the tiniest bit back and forth.  
  
 _Now_.  
  
He clapped down on his thoughts, catching them between two imagined panes of glass. They were as strong and thick as his Occlumency shields, and in reality, that was what they were, only turned inwards and made to reflect a purpose stronger than they had ever had to before. He pinned his thoughts the way he had sometimes seen insects pinned in Muggle collections of them, and he held them there, and he leaned over and looked down into their imaginary faces.  
  
He could see his emotions towards Potter as colored blobs, his desire for death as a dark and dancing shape that partnered its shadow effortlessly, and his hunger and other bodily yearnings as amorphous masses that he could sneer at and ignore. He studied them all from the outside, and saw no link to the bond. He frowned, wondering if the bond had so integrated itself with his mind that Miss Parkinson was correct and it was useless trying to tell the two entities apart anymore.  
  
If that was the case, then he would not notice when the madness of despair began to creep in.  
  
But at last Severus turned his attention from his pinned and struggling thoughts between the two panes of glass to the side, and saw something that had escaped his attention before. It was so bright that that seemed impossible, but then he knew how it had happened. His focus on his own thoughts and memories had been so intent that he had ignored everything outside the paired shields.  
  
 _Well, the tactic worked._ If not quite as the books had intended. He was supposed to be able to flush bias out of his thoughts and concentrate with a cold and detached intelligence. Instead, he had flushed out the bond.  
  
It hung off to the side, so bright and coruscating that Severus blinked several times. It shone steadily silver, and strewn through it were bright blue and black sparks, and it led off into the distance. It thinned the further away it traveled. Severus thought that meant its connection to his mind grew more tenuous with distance.  
  
He turned and studied the bond, giving it the full benefit of his attention as he had not been able to before now. It hung in his mind and sparkled, and did nothing else. When Severus reached out and trailed a hand through the bond, it did nothing but feel cool on his fingers. Severus wondered idly if that was because he was distant from Potter right now and not under orders. It was neutral until stirred.  
  
Then he gasped sharply, because at the thought of Potter, the bond grew spikes and ripples that ran through his mind like the steel teeth of a trap. He pulled back and looked warily at it, noticing the length of time it took the spikes to subside.  
  
He nodded.  _I must free myself of this._  
  
His first thought had been to ask Potter to free him from the bond, the way he had Zabini, but Severus was doubtful about his chances to pass through his trial without Potter’s protection and aid. He might end up with a sentence in Azkaban anyway, but it would surely be shorter with Potter to protect him, and the public’s impression that the dangerous killer of Albus Dumbledore was tamed by his “submission” to the bond.  
  
Severus showed his teeth to no one as he imagined that, and then shook his head and focused on the bond again.  
  
If he could keep the protection of the bond but free himself from its more dubious effects, that would be ideal. And now that he saw it, he thought he could.  
  
Severus reached out, cautiously. Once again, the bond did not react when he merely touched it. It would light up at certain thoughts, he knew that now, and he used Occlumency to focus his mind on nothing but his desire to get rid of the bond, the way he had once used it to keep focused on his desire to serve the Dark Lord in Death Eater meetings.  
  
He slid easily under the flat plane of the bond, winding his way in among the stars, and studied the way it looped around his thoughts. Like links of a chain, he thought, except not as sturdy. The silver light it was made of looked fragile, in fact, until one touched it. Then it was more like water, which yielded in small amounts but exerted incredible amounts of pressure when one tried to fight back against it.  
  
Severus wondered if there was something to the comparison. Water came pouring in through any gap, pressed on doors, shattered windows, insisted on caging people who tried to swim through it with barely tangible force. What would happen if he opened another place in his mind for the bond to flow?  
  
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, or he did in his mind, and he knew that his physical body would be echoing the movements as well. The bond quivered, still right there, still ready to overwhelm him in a second if he did something that it didn’t like. Severus gave a grim smile and opened up memories he hadn’t touched in years.  
  
They were memories of the tiny, cramped house at Spinner’s End as it had been in the years when his parents lived with him there. Merely moving the curtain aside from the memories made pain tear through Severus like the tail of a comet. But he could not be deterred. He went on moving it back, and into the gap, pain poured.  
  
And the bond followed.  
  
Severus gasped. He had not been certain it would work. But the bond responded to strong emotions, as he remembered a moment later, and in the meantime, it had the compulsion to soothe anxiety and pain on his part. When he had felt suicidal—earlier—then it had tried to prevent him from dying by reporting his emotions. Now he was feeling a different kind of agony, but the bond only knew how intense it was, not the source.  
  
That gave him another idea. With a vicious smile that only a few people, none of them alive, would have recognized, he ripped open more memories of the times when he had knelt at the Dark Lord’s feet.  
  
The bond recognized kinship in Severus’s past thoughts about the Dark Mark, his deep resentment that he had been bound to follow someone like the Dark Lord. It flooded that part of his mind, too, trying to put him to sleep, trying to heal and soothe him.  
  
Severus, watching it, snorted. He could not believe that he had not known the extent to which the bond’s weight on his mind was distorting his thoughts. It ought to have been obvious to someone skilled as he was, not only in Occlumency and Legilimency, but in the art of watching for self-betrayal.  
  
But he knew now, and he would not succumb to the charm of having someone to understand him again. Potter was his Lord, better morally but not so different from the Dark Lord and Dumbledore.  
  
The bond surged and crashed against him again at the thought of Potter, but Severus had redistributed its weight in his mind, and it had no ability to crush his independence flat again. He shut his eyes and rose to the surface of his mind.  
  
He opened his eyes in the library, and watched the crackling of the fire for a second.  
  
This way, he would have the best of both worlds. The political protection of the bond while he needed it, and the freedom of his thoughts in the meantime, so that he was something other than Potter’s mindless minion.  
  
It was possible that he would need to tend and maintain his freedom, pruning the bond back, more than once. But if it meant he would live free…  
  
There was no price for that not worth paying.  
  
*  
  
“This is only a formality, is it not?”  
  
Harry kept his mouth set, so that the temptation to grin wouldn’t get the better of him. He honestly didn’t think it would be a good idea to do that in front of Lucius. He might decide that was a sign that Harry was weak or charmed by him, and press for something other than the concessions Harry had already given him.  
  
But he did want to grin anyway, because Lucius was so  _whiny._  
  
“Yes,” Harry said quietly. “I’ll fight for Draco. For Narcissa, if there’s opposition to her as harsh as there will be to you. But I do want you to accept that I won’t be able to get you away from Azkaban. And I don’t want you to—I don’t know, accuse me of something that will play into the hands of people who distrust me and this bond. I want you to know that I am fighting to  _help_ you.” He leaned forwards. “Don’t undermine me.”  
  
Lucius looked at him with eyes that weren’t trying to appear innocent, since he must know better than that, but were fairly wide. “Do you think I could actually undermine the hero of the wizarding world?”  
  
 _I think that you would try, you old bastard._ But Harry kept that to himself, too. The truce with Draco, which was what mattered most to him in his interactions with the Malfoys since Draco was actually his vassal, would have a harder chance of surviving if Harry let his real opinion of Lucius out.  
  
“You might be able to,” Harry said. “With everything in such a fragile state right now, with the Wizengamot afraid of what I might do with the political power of my name and the Freedom Fighters and the other people uncertain of the bond, someone putting pressure in the right place could destroy me.”  
  
Lucius sat up and clasped his hands on the table in front of him. “At least you recognize that.”  
  
 _That doesn’t look like just agreeing._ Harry leaned back and held Lucius’s eyes, waiting for the proposal. Because of course there would be some sort of proposal. It wasn’t Lucius unless he was going to do something like that.  
  
“But have you considered what pressure in the  _right_ place could do?” Lucius asked, his voice low and confidential. Harry could see why he had charmed people in the past. It was the sort of thing Lucius would never manage to do with him, but still. He could see why it had worked. “If it could grant you the kind of allegiance you’ve never dreamed of.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “It’s the kind of thing that might be nice to dream about, but you can’t help me like that. Your name is too tarnished.”  
  
And there was what Lucius had done to Ginny, and Dobby, and tried to do to Harry himself. But bringing that up would be like bringing up the insults and fighting Harry and Draco had done in the past. It could do nothing right now except weaken the sort of internal peace Harry was trying to establish.   
  
“I know,” Lucius said. “But I still know people who can. I still have two or three favors I could call in. The sort of favors that don’t change with the changing times, because if they did, then the people who owe them would render themselves vulnerable to the most exquisite kind of blackmail. I could tell them I want them to help you. They would probably be happy to. Helping you at the moment makes more political sense than helping me.”  
  
Harry frankly stared at him. “If you have power like that, why aren’t you trying to use it to help you out of the trial?”  
  
Lucius closed his lips, and they had a mild staring contest until Lucius seemed to make the decision to throw the dice on the table. “Because they are my last resort,” he said. “I did not want to use them until I was in the midst of the trial, and even then, only if the Wizengamot seemed as if it might vote for the Kiss instead of Azkaban. I am harder than my wife and son think I am. I can survive a prison term. But I do not want to die.”  
  
Harry frowned at him. He couldn’t really dispute that last statement, since it wasn’t like  _Harry_ wanted to die, either. But the difference between him and Lucius was that he had been willing to do it when it mattered.  
  
“I do not know how much you know about pure-blood families, and the way we act,” Lucius continued abruptly, throwing Harry off-stride just as he was about to say something cutting. “There is another reason that I did not call in these favors before now, and Draco is rather strongly concerned in it.”  
  
“I only really know what Draco bragged about at school, and what Dobby told me,” Harry said.  
  
Lucius gave him a wounded look that Harry ignored. “What about pure-blood families?” he added, turning around to accept a cup of tea from Kreacher. Kreacher put one down in front of Lucius, too, but with a mutter about “evil masters” that made a muscle twitch at the corner of Lucius’s eye.  
  
“What matters most is carrying the family name forwards,” Lucius said. “That is why we must have children. That is why Draco will have children, in his time.” He gave Harry a pointed look.  
  
“The last thing I want to forbid is him getting married,” Harry said. “When the trials are done I can release him from the bond, for that matter.” The thought made him feel as if he had a toothache, but he resolutely pushed ahead. “What is this  _really_ about?”  
  
“I have come to realize that my time as head of the Malfoy family is almost done.” Lucius seemed to be admiring the china the cups were made from. Maybe it was expensive china. That was something Harry knew next to nothing about. “Draco is the one who must take over and carry on from here. He is the future. It is one reason I was so willing to give you the blood that you needed to find him.”  
  
“Thank you for doing that,” Harry said. It couldn’t hurt to be polite. “But you mean that you’re willing to give me those favors because you want to help Draco?”  
  
Lucius looked up and nodded. “I am going to prison. I have hope that Narcissa will remain free, but she is not a Malfoy by blood and could continue the family line only in name. Draco  _must_ stay free.”  
  
“So you want to use those favors to help him, and not yourself.” Harry nodded thoughtfully. It fit with what Lucius had been willing to do for Draco so far, the way he’d begged for Draco’s life during the final battle and the resignation he’d displayed since Draco’s crazy plans hadn’t worked out.  
  
If that plan with the Amortentia had worked, Harry thought, Lucius would have gone along with it. He did still want both his freedom and Draco’s. He had only given in because he thought there was no way he could have both.  
  
But as long as he had Lucius cornered and actually admitting things, Harry thought, then he could admire the small part of Lucius that was admirable. He fixed on him again and asked, “And those people who owe you favors would be willing to give you any kind of favor that you asked? They wouldn’t be looking for a way to get out of this, or try to pay you instead of Draco?”  
  
“I have explained why they cannot.” Lucius’s eyes were bright and cold. “Will you listen to me explain what I intend to do?”  
  
Harry restrained his anger. Lucius wasn’t a vassal—most  _emphatically_ wasn’t a vassal of his—and Harry had the upper hand, here. He could cut off the conversation and walk away if that was what he wanted. He nodded and leaned back, sipping his cup of tea and sighing as the warmth flooded his mouth while he waited.  
  
“I will summon them to come before the Wizengamot and testify as to other things they saw Draco do during the war,” Lucius said. “Things that benefited your side. What he suffered. The noble side of him that never wanted to do the things I would have asked him to do.”  
  
 _Such as identify me at the Manor,_ Harry completed the sentence in his head. “What good will that do? The Wizengamot will test everyone with Veritaserum.”  
  
Lucius sighed. “Legally, those they ask to take it can still refuse, Mr. Potter. I would suggest  _strongly_ that you do. And in the meantime, you will have two or three prominent citizens on your side, known to members of the Wizengamot, and thrilled to pay off the favors I’ve held over their heads for so long. The Wizengamot is unlikely to question them. If they were testifying for someone like Bellatrix Lestrange, it would be a different story. But Draco? The Wizengamot doesn’t care about him. They’ll leave him alone.”  
  
“So you’ll defend him with lies,” Harry said, not sure why he was talking that way.  
  
Lucius gave him a look that wouldn’t have been out of place from Professor McGonagall receiving an awful essay. “Yes, Potter, I will,” he said slowly. “You hardly thought that truth and nobility would carry the day in this trial?”  
  
“I wasn’t going to outright lie.”  
  
“You would be very bad at it if you did.” Now Lucius was regarding him with a more tolerant eye. “No one would expect you to,” he continued, in a tone that Harry thought he meant to be kindly. “This is only the minimum that someone could expect from you, that you would protect your vassals with any means at your disposal. And if you don’t need to spend as much time and thought on Draco’s defense, that will free you up to think more about the others.”  
  
Harry grimaced. It was true that he hadn’t thought much about how he would defend the others. Snape would be particularly hard, even with the memories of the Unbreakable Vow he had made to Dumbledore.  
  
He couldn’t really afford to spend all his time on Draco, he thought. He had already let the Malfoys consume more of his time and attention than he wanted.  
  
“I want you to use all your favors to keep Draco free,” he said abruptly. “No use keeping anything back for yourself to have comforts in prison, wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
“If she remains free, Narcissa will see that I survive Azkaban,” Lucius said simply. “And, of course, I cannot help it that someone might do something to help me for a bribe or the sake of the admiration provoked by the Malfoy name.”  
  
Harry stared at him. “You think there’s any  _left_?”  
  
“I said there may be. There were more who came to my aid during my trial after the first war than I would have thought.” Lucius just sat there and regarded him calmly. “Really, Mr. Potter, what does it matter? We are both getting what you want. You, the ability to protect Draco and a tame Lucius Malfoy. Me, the freedom of the one person who can carry my family name forwards. It is useless to tangle further.”  
  
The more Harry thought about it, the more he agreed. It was true that he could never know if someone who tried to help Lucius in the future was doing it because of some hidden favor that Lucius hadn’t told Harry about or because  _they_ wanted a favor at a later time. Or because they’d been bribed with Malfoy heirlooms, for that matter. There was too much going on that Harry couldn’t control.  
  
 _Concentrate on what you can. Concentrate on your vassals and the bond._  
  
“All right,” Harry said, standing with a nod to Lucius. “If you’ll give me the names of these people who owe you favors, then I’ll make sure that Kreacher delivers letters to them telling them what you expect.” He paused. “I’ll want to read the letters before they go out, of course.”  
  
“Of course.” Lucius waited until Harry had moved to the kitchen doorway to speak again. “Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry turned around and regarded him. Lucius was sitting up and leaning on the table now, elbows on the surface in a way that Harry would have thought he’d regard as bad manners, eyes not moving from Harry.  
  
“I know that the bond is affecting Draco, and that may be the reason he’s so agreeable and ready to follow you,” Lucius told him softly. “All I ask is that you do not try to change him. Let the effects of the bond proceed naturally, the way you will the effort for his defense. Do not bear down on him and crush his personality.”  
  
Harry threw up his hands. “You think I enjoy having people this obedient to me? I don’t! The bond does things sometimes, and I don’t even know why!”  
  
Lucius relaxed. “Then you will not try to control him that directly. That is good.” His eyes sparked for a second. “Even if Draco’s main defense comes from your ignorance rather than you not wishing to change him.”  
  
Muttering, Harry stomped out of the room. Even when he was yielding and going along with most of what Harry wanted, Lucius Malfoy was  _still_ a bastard.


	39. Ablaze

“Harry. We need you in the drawing room.”  
  
Harry shut his book and sat up with a snap. He could feel Greg tensing up behind him. Greg had let Harry’s friends look after him, including guarding his rooms, for a few days, but he had become so unhappy that Harry had to let Greg spend time with him.   
  
But it was Hermione who came through the door into the library, and she didn’t look panicked.  _Not quite yet,_ Harry thought critically, studying her. She did walk with her chin up and her hand closed around her wand as though she might need to curse someone. Harry decided that only one thing would have made her look like that.  
  
“Who came through the fireplace?”  
  
Hermione stared at him, but recovered herself. “You heard the Floo chime, of course.”  
  
Harry hadn’t heard any such thing, and she ought to have known that, since he was in the library, practically miles away from the Floo that must have chimed. But it showed how shaken she was, and scolding her would make the matter worse, so he nodded and waited, while Hermione shook her fist at nothing.  
  
“The Aurors,” she said. “I thought they were just here to move Zabini somewhere else, but they said that the Ministry…” Her voice trailed off.   
  
If she couldn’t bring herself to say it, then Harry would have to. “They want the trials to begin as soon as possible,” he said. Greg gave a grunt behind him, but Harry couldn’t interpret it, and the bond was quiet in the back of his head, the way it was more often now since Harry had mastered it. Well, and since he had decided that he didn’t want to spy on the emotions of his vassals. “All right. We’ll go.”  
  
“My lord.”  
  
Greg had stepped in front of him and knelt down. Harry stared at him. Greg was crossing his arms in front of him, the right one, with the shield mark of the bond, on top. It was a posture that Harry had never seen someone adopt before, and although he’d been reading more about the relationships between Lords and vassals so that he would have some idea of what he could demand when they went in front of the Wizengamot, he didn’t recognize it from the books, either.  
  
“What does this mean?” he asked, catching Greg’s eyes and waiting for some kind of explanation.  
  
“It means I’m begging a boon.” Greg stared up at him with eyes so intent that Harry swallowed. But, well, he had agreed that he would accept Greg into the bond and keep him with him no matter what, so that meant he had to listen and even agree when Greg talked like this.  
  
“All right,” he said. “What kind of boon do you want?” It was hard to think of it, really. Greg had wanted to have a Lord who would order him around, and he had that, with Harry. What else was there?  
  
“That you keep me with you,” Greg said. He seemed to think that was enough, but maybe he read Harry’s expression and saw it wasn’t, so he added, “All the time.”  
  
“The Aurors won’t let you stay together,” Hermione interjected, before Harry could say something. “They’ll put you in separate holding cells. They already think that you spend too much time together. Well, probably,” she added, when Harry glanced at her curiously, wondering how she knew what Aurors thought.  
  
“They’ll have to,” said Greg, with the secure, simple way he had. Sometimes Harry envied him, Slytherin or not, bully or no. He seemed to know everything so well, and once he had made a decision, he had stuck to it, unlike Harry, who kept changing his mind because he learned new things about the bond and the Slytherins involved with it.  
  
Then Greg’s eyes came to his, and Harry blinked. There was something firm under the surface there, something more than the desperate clinging he could say that Greg had done to him in the past.  
  
“Is this really important?” he asked. There were other things he wanted to ask, but they might be beyond Greg’s comprehension—not even because of his intelligence level, but because Harry didn’t have the words for them and Greg had grown up hearing about Lord bonds and Harry hadn’t.  
  
“It is.” Greg didn’t waver. He hadn’t even wavered since he crouched down, Harry thought. Well, maybe being so big gave him some extra support in the knees and ankles or something. “I need you to stay with me.”  
  
Harry glanced helplessly at Hermione. She shook her head. She didn’t know what this meant, either, then, although Harry knew she had been reading day and night, including some of the time he had been taking naps or meditating.  
  
“All right,” Harry said, and turned back to Greg. “I promise that you can stay with me all the time, no matter what.”  
  
Nothing happened, including Greg rising to his feet. Instead, he looked up at Harry with eyes that shone like Knuts. “You have to touch your bond mark to mine. That’s the way the Lord accepts the begging for a boon and promises to pay it back.” There was a singsong note to his voice that Harry thought probably came from the way his mother had told the story or the ritual to him.  
  
Harry took a deep breath and nodded, and extended his right arm downwards. This was something he couldn’t remember ever seeing Voldemort do with his Death Eaters, and it seemed weirdly intimate.   
  
 _But then, Voldemort isn’t a good role model for anybody._  
  
Their bond marks brushed, and Harry immediately felt as though he was in the center of a lightning storm. All the hair on his body stood on end at once, and his teeth chattered with a strange mixture of fear and exhilaration. He tossed his head back and stared around. No, there was no lightning in the air. Nothing but the staring of Hermione’s eyes, and Ron’s, where he had come to the door behind her.  
  
And then Snape, striding in so fast that he seemed to body-block Hermione and Ron out of the way instead of shove them. “What did you do, you foolish child?” he hissed at Harry. “The bond is  _ringing_.”  
  
“Don’t call my lord a foolish child.”  
  
Harry suddenly couldn’t see Snape anymore. That was because Greg had stood up between them, and he was facing Snape, putting his broad back between Harry and Snape as if he thought another bondmate might be a danger. Harry touched Greg tentatively on the shoulder. It was like trying to shove a hill out of the way.  
  
“I don’t think Severus wants to hurt me,” Harry said, remembering to use Snape’s first name just in time. “And we really need to get down and to the fireplace if the Aurors are coming to take us to the trials.”  
  
Snape was looking at him, Harry just knew it, even with Greg between them. “You are nervous about the trials, when you have spent so much time trying to prepare us for them?”  
  
“I think the trials need to  _begin_ ,” Harry said, stressing the word as much as he could when he couldn’t see Snape’s face and didn’t know how this was affecting him. He supposed he could have tried to feel through the bond, but he had already taken too much from Snape. And anyway, Snape’s emotions had been dimmed through the bond lately, as though he had retreated even further. “So we’ll go down and they’ll begin.” He shoved a little at Greg’s shoulder. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, but we need to go.”  
  
Greg turned and looked at him. “No one has the right to insult my lord,” he said simply.  
  
Harry could see Snape now, and caught him rolling his eyes. He was glad that Greg didn’t see that to react to. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll remember that. As long as you remember that not everyone is going to know about me or treat me the same way you do when we go to the Ministry.”  
  
Greg considered that closely enough that Harry wanted to shake him. Not that it would do any good if he did. He remembered that as he had remembered that it would do no good trying to shove Greg when he was standing like a bulwark in front of him, and he caught his breath and waited.  
  
“Okay,” Greg finally said, and went in front of Harry, down the stairs. Harry shrugged at his friends and followed. He didn’t know the exact consequences of the promise Greg had extracted from him, but so far, it didn’t seem to be doing any harm.  
  
“What did you do?” Snape muttered between his teeth as Harry passed him.  
  
“Promised him that I would let him stay with me at all times,” Harry said, and he knew the next question before Snape could ask him. “A promise that I sealed by touching my bond mark to his.”  
  
Snape got the most peculiar expression on his face. Harry shook his head and kept walking down the stairs. He knew that expression from the time that Snape had refused to explain Occlumency to him beyond barked instructions about clearing his mind. He was going to leave it alone now.  
  
*  
  
Greg was calm and happy, now. He thought the only thing that would make him happier was seeing his Mum, but he knew she couldn’t be here, and that was all right.  
  
His Lord was here.  
  
Greg was content to just walk in front of his Lord all the way to the drawing room where the Aurors lined the corridors. A lot of them were tall, but none of them were as big as Greg. Greg looked them over. He saw some he could defeat, and some he could take wands from. He found them watching him. They thought he was dangerous.  
  
They were right. That didn’t mean they would be able to stop him, if they tried to hurt Lord Potter and he had to hurt them.  
  
They came to a halt in front of the Auror woman Greg had seen once before. Auror Stone. She looked at Lord Potter and shook her head. “You do realize that you’ll have to bring all your vassals along with you, right?” she asked.  
  
“If you mean Blaise Zabini,” said Lord Potter, his voice filled with that confidence Greg admired so much, because it was better than Draco’s confidence, “then he’s no longer my vassal. I’ve released him from the bond.”  
  
The Auror woman stared at his Lord. Greg didn’t move, because there were big Aurors on either side of her. But if she took out her wand, then he would take it away from her. There were ways to do that.  
  
“I did inform you of that,” Lord Potter added, and he sounded a bit sorry.  
  
Greg could understand, when he thought about it. Blaise had been part of the bond. Now he wasn’t. His Lord would feel that was something to regret. Greg thought Blaise should go if he wanted. No one should stay near his Lord who didn’t respect him.  
  
“So you did,” said the Auror woman, and maybe she had relaxed a little. She nodded to Lord Potter. “But you will come with us now.”  
  
“So the trials can begin,” said Lord Potter, and held his hands out in front of him. Greg blinked in confusion. Was he going to swear to the Auror woman? It was his choice, but Greg didn’t see why he had to.  
  
The Auror woman conjured chains that bound Lord Potter’s wrists, though. Greg took a quick step forwards.  
  
“No, Greg,” said Lord Potter, and he didn’t sound surprised, only weary. Greg hesitated. He didn’t want to tire his Lord out. “This is something we agreed to. The Ministry has to hold us prisoner in order to make its point.” For a second, he looked the Auror woman in the face, and she bobbed her head in a little pecking motion.  
  
“But they’re going to hurt you,” said Greg. He thought of a worrying idea. What if Lord Potter didn’t care if people hurt him? That would explain some things, and it would hurt Greg.  
  
“I care if people hurt my vassals,” said Lord Potter, and he seemed to be talking to Greg down the bond, because no one else was moving or gaping or rolling their eyes, the way they did a lot of times when people talked to Greg. “I would fight back if they tried to kill me. But they’re not going to hurt me physically. I promise.”  
  
Greg looked warily at the Auror woman. He didn’t think he could trust her. But he didn’t trust many people. That was another thing his mum had taught him. He wasn’t to trust all the time. He was to hold back and hang back and see who could command and who would lie to him.   
  
She would be happy that he had found a Lord so worthy, Greg thought, but she would also say that he couldn’t be forward. He nodded and stepped back. “If you say so,” he said.  
  
Lord Potter gave him a faint smile, as if he liked Greg, and shook his head. Then he turned back to the fireplaces. The others were entering the room. Professor Snape and Pansy and Draco and Mr. Malfoy and Mrs. Malfoy.  
  
And Blaise. He came in last, and stood by the doorway as if he thought he could run out again and no one would come after him. His hand was clenching the doorframe. Greg studied him, but Blaise wasn’t dangerous without a wand.  
  
“You, too, Mr. Zabini,” said the Auror woman, and reached out her hand.  
  
Blaise came to her, but he was frowning. “I’m not one of them,” he said, nodding at the rest of them.  
  
Lord Potter didn’t look at him, but Greg saw Lord Potter’s shoulders tighten. That was how Greg figured out what Blaise meant. Otherwise, Blaise could be talking about just anything, and Greg wouldn’t know. Blaise was mysterious like that.  
  
“You should be honored to be a vassal,” Greg told Blaise. He didn’t open his mouth much, because that would attract the attention of the Aurors, and he didn’t really want their attention. He wanted to walk out of here under his own power, and being loud about it would make the Aurors angry.  
  
Blaise flashed him a flat look and turned back to the front with his nose stuck in the air. Greg watched him. He didn’t have a wand, and there were two people between him and Lord Potter.  
  
That probably meant he couldn’t attack Lord Potter. Still, Greg was glad that he had begged that boon. Lord Potter really needed protection, and Greg was the one who should stay with him.  
  
They went through the fireplace. The last thing Greg saw was Professor Snape’s eyes. They were locked on Lord Potter’s back, and there was anger in his face, tight lines that Greg didn’t really understand.  
  
Greg tensed his shoulders. Well, Professor Snape could look like that all he wanted, but if he tried to attack Lord Potter, then he would learn about the boon. Greg was afraid of Professor Snape, but he would fight him to protect his Lord.  
  
*  
  
Harry came out into a deserted area of the Ministry. He took a quick look around and decided it was part of the Auror Department. There were empty desks and chairs all around them, and cubicles that still had some paperwork with ink that looked wet.  
  
“You decided it was best if you didn’t march us through the Atrium?” he asked Stone, who had taken charge of him personally. She was the only reason he hadn’t stumbled when he came through the Floo, really.  
  
Stone glanced at him. “The Ministry is trying to get back to a normal state of operations, Mr. Potter. That means that marching you through the middle of the Atrium would cause a disruption to ordinary working life. And  _that_ is something we do not need.” Her hand tightened on his arm for a second.  
  
Harry just nodded in resignation. It seemed that Stone had found some Aurors she could trust, if the numbers that came with her were any indication, but apparently Harry was too dangerous to appear in front of other people.  
  
 _They’ll see me anyway, when I’m in front of the Wizengamot and they have to ask me questions. Lots of them will come and watch that._  
  
But Harry didn’t say the words, and let Stone draw him along. They passed quickly through the Auror Department and to a set of lifts that Harry had never seen before. When he glanced at Stone, her shoulders rose and fell. “These are the lifts that we use for transporting prisoners to the courtrooms, most of the time.”  
  
Harry just nodded, and relaxed only when they were all in the lifts and the doors had closed behind them. In the lift with him were Stone, two of her Aurors, Greg, and Snape. The bond pulsed on his arm, and he could feel the others on the lift beside this one.  
  
All except Blaise.  
  
He would have to get over that loss sooner or later, and to distract his mind from it, Harry turned his mind away to Snape. Something was different with him, too, but Harry couldn’t figure it out. He certainly looked the same from the outside. His arms were folded, and he ignored the two Aurors with their wands held on him as though they were Potions ingredients he had no need of yet. He was staring at the side of the lift with fathomless dark eyes.  
  
He turned his head and abruptly captured Harry’s gaze, and his smirk broke out. “Ask what you have to ask, Mr. Potter.”  
  
Greg twitched, probably because Snape hadn’t given Harry a title. Harry hoped that boon wouldn’t be too much of a problem. “Why does your presence in the bond feel different?” Harry asked, realizing the difference as he gave words to it. “It feels light and drifting and—like you suddenly turned to dandelion fluff or something.”  
  
Snape’s face snapped taut, and he shook his head. “That is an unflattering comparison,” he said.  
  
Which meant it was an insult. Ignoring the curious gazes of Stone and her two companions, Harry cocked his head at Snape. He was the one who had asked Harry to talk about his presence in the bond, and if he wanted to keep it a secret, he should have been silent. “I know. But that’s what it feels like. I can still feel Draco and Greg and Pansy normally. But you’ve withdrawn from me.”  
  
“What about Mr. Zabini?” From the sound of his voice, Snape was no more than mildly interested in the comparison, but Harry could feel a warning tingle from the shield mark on his arm. Greg was looking intently back and forth between them, as if trying to figure out whether Harry would need any protection from words.  
  
“You know that Blaise isn’t a part of the bond anymore,” Harry said. None of the Aurors started, which meant everyone in the lift knew about that. Well, Harry had warned them. Perhaps they hadn’t removed Blaise just because they had known that the trials were due to start soon. “I need to figure out what happened to you. You’re not gone, the way he is. You’re there, but—I feel like I can’t defend you as well.”  
  
Snape sneered at him. “Sometimes I forget that this intrusion into my thoughts and corruption of my mind began with an attempt to defend me.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to retort, but the lift jerked to a stop, and the doors softly jangled open.  
  
Auror Stone gave Harry a warning glance. Harry clamped his mouth shut again and shot Snape a brooding look. Snape gave him the most smug look that Harry had seen from him yet, and strode off the lift, following the Aurors.  
  
Harry followed him, staring at his back. Greg was at his shoulder, a reassuring source of strength—even though he hated to think that, because he was the one who was technically in control of the bond.  _He_ should be the one who was providing Greg with comfort and reassurance, not demanding them from him.  
  
“Lord Potter?”  
  
Harry turned his head at the unexpected address. He had thought it was only Greg who called him that. And Greg was crowding up to his shoulder, as if jealous that someone else would want to use the title.  
  
It was even more of a surprise that it was Rita Skeeter. The Aurors were glaring at her, but she ignored them serenely, with what Harry thought was the ease of long practice. She held up her Quick-Quotes Quill, in fact, and gave him a winsome little smile.  
  
“Do you have a moment to talk to a faithful reporter?” she asked.  
  
Harry choked back his protest, and inclined his head. “If my guards here will permit me,” he said, and turned to them with a small smile, too.  
  
Auror Stone made no objection, but  _did_ give him a stern look. Harry understood that. He had taken advantage of Skeeter’s desire to report on him once before, when he was locked up in the holding cells. This time, the situation was a lot more delicate, and he could upset someone in the Wizengamot. That wouldn’t be a good idea right before the trials.  
  
But Harry still owed Skeeter something for her help last time, and he nodded and said, “What did you want to ask me?”  
  
Skeeter simpered and bent closer to him. Harry saw her lips moving, and thought he caught the edge of a meaningless question about his friends and the war.  
  
But under the words, moving through them somehow, he heard a hissed warning. “The Wizengamot held a vote already, prefatory to the trial. Two-thirds of them don’t believe in your innocence.”  
  
Harry knew he stiffened, but he hoped that would seem to happen because of the question Skeeter was asking on top of her warning, using a spell that Harry didn’t know, but meant to learn. He managed to pull his head back and just nod. “I think the answer is more complicated than I can explain right now, when the Wizengamot is waiting for me,” he said. “Can I speak to you after the first session and see what happens?”  
  
Skeeter looked straight at him, less like a darting lizard than Harry had ever seen her. Harry nodded again, and this time, Skeeter bowed to him and pulled away.  
  
Harry wondered for a second why she was being so helpful, then felt like hitting himself. Of course. She was waiting for the drama that would come out of this, and it was better drama if he walked into the courtroom prepared than if he didn’t know anything about it. He would fight harder, and give Skeeter more to write about.   
  
Besides, she might want him to come out free so that he could pay his debt to her.  
  
Harry winked at her with a confidence he didn’t feel, and stepped forwards. The Aurors scrambled a bit, then fell in around him. Snape strode ahead, distant, and Greg was a comforting presence at his shoulder. Draco and Pansy were beyond them, in their own ring of Aurors, but their presences felt normal.  
  
He couldn’t sense Blaise, of course, but he couldn’t sense Ron and Hermione either. Seeing them there would have to be enough.  
  
The doors opened, and they stepped into the courtroom.


	40. A Wilderness of Faces

Harry closed his eyes and retreated into his mind for just a few moments as they surged into the courtroom. The Aurors escorting him had to slow down for a minute, anyway, to urge a path through the spectators. It only got worse when people turned around and noticed the hair, or the scar, or however they recognized him. He had time.  
  
He reached towards the bond, and it sparked to life in his mind immediately. It was probably all the more ready because Harry hadn’t touched it much in the last few days, letting it recover from the debacle with Blaise and the confrontation with Draco.  
  
Now he envisioned that gleaming silver cord that was the easiest way to picture the bond when he was thinking about it only in his mind, and pulled it towards him, slowly, easily, wrapping it around him like a great snake. The image was only frightening until he remembered his ability to speak Parseltongue. He hissed to the bond, and it coiled around him, lifting its head and flicking out a forked tongue.  
  
Harry opened his eyes before the metaphors and the imagery could suck him too deep into his own mind. In the meantime, he did have an audience, and some of them would take a pair of closed eyes to mean that he didn’t care about the trial. He wanted to silence that particular cluster of rumors before it began.  
  
He glanced down at his arms, and saw the silver fire flickering into being around them. Harry smiled. That had been an effect described in some of the books, but they’d also warned him that he had to have really good control over the bond to do it.  
  
Which meant he cared about his vassals. Which meant this harmless fire might be able to do more than making him look impressive, or defending his vassals in a pinch if they were attacked. It would show that he was invested in this bond, that he couldn’t be easily swayed or dismissed, and that he had taken the time to learn about the bond and command it where before, he had probably appeared reluctant.  
  
Harry lifted his head, ignoring the murmurs spreading out from him, and fixed his eyes on the packed rows of the Wizengamot ahead of him.  
  
They were easily visible, since they were sitting in a gallery of seats lofted over the heads of the crowd. All of them wore robes that went a step beyond dress robes, into blistering formality. Harry swallowed a surge of discomfort. He missed Dumbledore and his robes that were a mixture of green and yellow and peacock blue and whatever else he felt like wearing at the moment. Dumbledore had been secure in his power, secure enough that he didn’t mind looking ridiculous.  
  
Dumbledore had also been the one responsible for making Snape kill him and making Harry almost walk to his death in the Forbidden Forest. But Harry was learning to feel more than one emotion for a person. If he could respect Snape and want him in the bond and be _completely exasperated_ with him at the same time, and if he could want Blaise to be his vassal and also to be free, then one dead Headmaster wasn’t a problem.  
  
The front row of the Wizengamot was the most important one, Hermione had taught him, and Harry focused on the white-haired wizard in the middle. For whatever reason, he had very long hair, flowing almost to his waist, but his beard was trimmed short, and only came down to the top of his chest. His eyes were grey, like Draco’s, but far more distant and remote than Draco’s had ever looked.  
  
 _Well, speaking to Lucius Malfoy ought to give me some practice for that, then,_ Harry thought, and lifted his chin higher. He would  _not_ despair. He would get his vassals fair trials—and if they were sentenced to Azkaban, it would at least be because the Wizengamot had considered the matter justly and decided that that was the best outcome, not in an orgy of fear and hatred and vengeance rather than justice.  
  
“Mr. Potter.” The voice was cool and quiet, but at the same time, seemed to echo from every direction. Harry decided that was probably a trick to intimidate the criminals who normally stood in front of the Wizengamot. He kept his eyes focused on the white-haired wizard in the front row, and sure enough, he saw the subtle motion of his wand towards his throat that bounced his voice. “What do you have to say for yourself?”  
  
“Do you want me to begin with any particular formula?” Harry asked, and smiled directly at the man, shaking his head a little. “Or does the trial of someone accused of bonding and defending people always begin this way, and I can say anything I want, too?”  
  
There was a noise, sort of like the hungry mutter that Harry remembered moving through some of the corridors of Hogwarts when rumors were circulating about him being the Heir of Slytherin. It swept around the room and up and down the rows of the Wizengamot. The white-haired wizard sat bolt still, observing him, but the others were leaning forwards and whispering to each other and nodding.  
  
“A  _true_ Lord would never be disrespectful,” said a tall woman who looked as if she was leaning out of her seat like a vulture, above the wizard.  
  
Harry turned his head a little so that he could watch her without taking his eyes off the central wizard, and replied, “Would a true Wizengamot take a vote beforehand on the guilt or innocence of someone who saved the wizarding world, and already have their minds made up about what they were going to decide?”  
  
There was a deeper sound this time, and then a deeper silence. The white-haired wizard had raised his hand. He stood up, and a thick staff appeared next to his hand, made of twisted black wood. Harry blinked. He didn’t know if that had been there all along, concealed by the way it leaned next to the chair, or not.  
  
The wizard aimed the end of the staff slowly at Harry. Harry could see that there was more or less a straight line between it and his heart. He didn’t move. If the man thought he was going to impress Harry that way, he was mistaken.  
  
Or, well, not really mistaken, but there was a difference between being impressed and  _showing_ that he was.  
  
“You listened at the door,” said the wizard, and pointed the end of the staff at Auror Stone, who looked back at him as if she had this kind of thing happen every day. “Our Aurors were not doing their jobs properly.”  
  
Stone only shook her head. “Mr. Potter just now arrived in the Ministry and came down the lifts, sir,” she said. “He didn’t listen at the door. We were with him all the time, and he couldn’t have.”  
  
The words seemed to shatter on the rock that the white-haired wizard had turned himself into. “It would be beneath any true Lord to stoop to tricks like eavesdropping,” he said, and the staff swung back to Harry. “You will tell us how you know that.”  
  
Harry opened his eyes very wide. His mind was racing, and he felt the way he sometimes did in a Quidditch game, when he didn’t know what move he was going to make next. He only knew that it would be  _good_. “Then you’re admitting that you took the vote, sir? That you aren’t a true Wizengamot in the sense I said?” He swept his gaze from side to side, trying to make the movement of his head as slow and terrible as the sweep of that staff. “That none of us can hope for a fair trial, because you already made up your mind about us beforehand?”  
  
“There is no saying that we made up our minds about you.” The white-haired wizard was doing the trick where he threw his voice again. “The vote is only a preliminary. It is not binding.”  
  
“But you took the vote,” Harry said, and let his eyes roam around the room disapprovingly. The crowd was watching in breathless interest, and the other members of the Wizengamot were trying to kill him with scowls. “That means that you’re not a true Wizengamot, the way I said.”  
  
“You listened. You are not a true Lord.”  
  
“Well, then we’re well-matched, aren’t we?” Harry smiled at the wizard and folded his arms, making the silver fire on his arms dance and spark and crawl up to his shoulders.  
  
There was a heartbeat when Harry thought some curse might boil out of that dark staff and straight at him, although he had never known a wizard who could cast spells with a staff instead of a wand. Then the wizard lowered the staff with a sound like a snort of disgust and took his seat, almost immediately assuming the posture of a statue again. The other members of the Wizengamot sighed and settled back in their chairs, too.  
  
“We did not come here to debate semantics,” the wizard said. Harry didn’t point out that he had  _started_ it, even though he badly wanted to. “We came here to decide if you are guilty or innocent.”  
  
“And my vassals,” Harry said. He knew he was pushing it, but he wanted everything out in the open, honest, where the Wizengamot wouldn’t have any maneuvering room with the little secrets and tricks they liked to pull out of their arses. It was why he had gone ahead and mentioned the information Skeeter gave him about the vote. A gamble, but it paid off; it didn’t look as though anyone in here knew about Skeeter’s Animagus form. “I know that my vassals who are Marked Death Eaters are to be tried for their crimes while they carried the Mark. Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Malfoy are to be tried for helping the Dark Lord in general. The vassals of mine who don’t have the Dark Mark are going to face trials for other crimes they may have committed that weren’t linked to the Dark Lord but to pressure from Death Eaters.” It couldn’t do any harm to plant that idea now. “I’m…” He tilted his head back and surveyed the ceiling for a second, frowning hard, then looked back at the Wizengamot. “What exactly am I going to be tried for, again? Saving the world? Trying to get other people treated fairly instead of just tossed in Azkaban and never mentioned again? I’d like to know.”  
  
There were people chuckling in the audience now, although most of them shut up when the white-haired wizard glared impartially around the room. He turned back to Harry finally, and even though he must have seen that the trick with throwing his voice didn’t work now, he tried it again. “You are to be tried for bonding vassals without their free choice.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Right, right. So you’re going to bring in experts on accidental bonds and show how it could have been consensual?”  
  
“This bond is not accidental.”  
  
 _That’s the tack they’re taking? Shit, what idiots._ Harry grinned a little. He didn’t know if it was the help of the bond that was letting him see through so many of the Wizengamot members’ arguments, or if it was just their idiocy in general. “Then you can call witnesses that were there and will agree that it wasn’t accidental?”  
  
“Better. We can call  _magical theory experts._ ”  
  
Harry had the distinct impression that he was supposed to fall down and cower at those words, but sometimes there were advantages to being an uneducated ignoramus about magical theory, as Hermione had hinted he was the other day. He nodded. “Of course. I’m sure they’ll be more convincing than a Great Hall full of eyewitnesses to the formation of the bond.”  
  
The white-haired wizard didn’t stir, but the vulture woman behind him did, leaning forwards and bringing her hands down on the arms of her chair with a ringing sound that Harry thought was supposed to impress him, although he actually wasn’t very impressed. It sounded like Aunt Petunia trying to swat a fly. “You impertinent  _child_. You were not raised in the wizarding world. What do you know about the mechanics of bonds?”  
  
“Enough to know that there are sometimes accidental ones,” Harry said, smiling up at her. “And unless you’re going to argue that a Shield Charm has ever blocked an obedience curse before and resulted in this kind of bond, then it seems that has to be accidental, because no one would know what it was supposed to look like and be able to create it. Especially someone who, as you point out, wasn’t raised in the wizarding world.” He paused, then added, “Ma’am.”  
  
The witch leaned back in her chair with a disgusted snort. Harry looked around, seeing the rigid expression on Auror Stone’s face and feeling little spikes of emotion from the bond. His vassals probably felt that he was taking inappropriate risks with their safety. Auror Stone probably felt that he wasn’t acting like the compliant prisoner he had promised her he would try to play.  
  
But he could see the smile of fierce pride on Hermione’s face, and Ron—someone who  _had_ been raised in the wizarding world, and had proved that he knew a little about bonds—was nodding at him.  
  
Fortified by the approval of his best friends, Harry faced the Wizengamot again.  
  
*  
  
 _Does he have the slightest idea what he’s doing?_  
  
Draco didn’t think he did. He could see his parents, and they were clasping hands, and his father’s knuckles were entirely white. Which meant that he didn’t think Potter had the slightest idea what he was doing, either.  
  
But when Draco looked back at that almost calm, almost relaxed figure with the silver fire flickering around his arms, he felt a strange swell of pride and satisfaction. Maybe it was just the slavish devotion a vassal was supposed to have for a Lord, the kind of thing that his father was starting to hint the bond had imposed on him when it made him stop disagreeing with Potter.   
  
It could be something else, though. Draco tried to remember the last time that someone other than his parents had fought for him. Well, Professor Snape had tried to prevent him from killing Dumbledore and then keep him safe during the year after, but that was different. Professor Snape had been compelled by an Unbreakable Vow. Mother had told him what she’d required the professor to do, and Draco was almost sure that another vow came into it somewhere.  
  
 _I suppose I could say that the bond is the only reason that Potter’s doing this, too._  
  
But it felt different than that. Potter didn’t have to meditate that hard on the bond just to fight for them. He didn’t have to call up silver fire or retort to the Wizengamot members like that. He could have just asked Professor Snape, and Draco, and Pansy, and maybe Greg, to help him come up with a defense.  
  
He didn’t have to let Blaise go.  
  
For now, Draco decided, he was going to think that Potter was fighting for them. Not just to avoid Azkaban or being responsible for a bunch of people who were in Azkaban. After all, none of them were there yet.  
  
He was fighting for himself, too, but he included Draco in his group of people important enough to struggle for.  
  
Draco watched him, eye and ear attuned to every movement, and something small and warm beginning to flourish in him.  
  
*  
  
 _Potter’s doing better than I thought he would._  
  
The thought had barely crossed Pansy’s mind when Potter lifted his head and added, “Are you going to call your magical theory expert witnesses now? Or not? I think we should get on with proving that the bond is accidental.”  
  
“We will.”  
  
Pansy rubbed her ear. The way that the speaker’s voice boomed everywhere around the room made her head hurt, and she supposed that he probably wouldn’t stop doing it just because she asked him to, either.  
  
Almost instantly, the speaker’s staff pointed at her. Pansy stared down it, and shivered. The bands of silver on the staff made it look like an illustration in one of her father’s books. That illustration depicted a staff that could fry someone’s soul simply by pointing at them.  
  
“I will give you one moment to take your hand away from your face and state your plot,” said the white-haired wizard.  
  
Pansy swallowed. She knew what they were doing, of course. Potter was proving too strong a target for them to attack, especially since most of the people in the background were starting to sound like they were in sympathy with him. So they switched to someone that most of the spectators had no particular reason to love, and hoped it would be enough.  
  
From the silence and the way they stared, the members of the Wizengamot expected an answer right away. Pansy folded her hands in front of her, and decided that the vassal could do worse than imitate her Lord when the Wizengamot was behaving this ridiculously. “My plot was to make my ear stop itching, sir.”  
  
“Lies,” said the white-haired wizard, and really, how addicted was he to the spell that threw his voice around? Pansy’s father had once told her that some spells that weren’t Dark Arts could be just as addictive, if the wizard didn’t cast them in the right way. “We know that you were doing something more than that.”  
  
“How, sir?” Pansy asked helplessly. She didn’t know what else to do. Yes, she wanted to go into politics, but it was the kind of politics where she would have time to lay her plans and build allies. She didn’t think that a sudden trial in front of the Wizengamot was an exam that she could be expected to pass on the first try.  
  
But Potter was looking encouragement at her,  _radiating_ it, really, and Pansy straightened up and asked, “How do you know, sir? Did I have something in my thoughts that told you I was plotting some sort of evil?”  
  
“Legilimency is forbidden by the Ministry,” said the white-haired wizard.  
  
Pansy didn’t believe that for one red-hot second, but she didn’t think now was the right time to say so. She had already gone so far, and Potter was probably the only one who could get away with going further. She lowered her eyes, and nodded meekly. “Yes, sir. I was just wondering how else you could know.”  
  
“Slytherins always plot evil.”  
  
That made some of the people in the audience  _and_ the Wizengamot hiss. Pansy, her mind spinning, knew the reason for that, and for what the white-haired wizard had said. He was trying to play on the anti-Slytherin prejudices that a lot of people who had gone through the war would have. Even if they had seen some of the Slytherins being tortured or suffering, they would still think that they had got a better deal than people who died.  
  
But on the other hand, the Wizengamot itself was full of former Slytherins. Precisely because they  _were_ the sort who tended to go into politics. Not all of them were like Mr. Malfoy, preferring to keep their power plays behind the scenes and control other people discreetly.  
  
So Pansy just nodded and said, “Yes, sir,” and looked at Potter. Potter took over in a second, his silver fire flashing and coiling around his arms. Pansy wondered if he could teach how her to do that, as long as she remained under the bond. It would be an impressive effect to have in the future, if she ran for office, and might make her look prettier.  
  
That was when she realized what she was thinking. She  _would_ survive and walk away from Azkaban, and she would remain under the bond.  
  
She swallowed, and then smiled.  
  
*  
  
Harry smiled at the white-haired wizard, feeling very nasty inside. He’d just done something stupid. The wizard, not him. The speaker of the Wizengamot.  
  
 _Why are so many people stupider than me?_  
  
Harry shrugged a little. Maybe the bond was helping him. Maybe it was what Hermione had said long ago, about the greatest of wizards not having much logic. Or maybe they just tended to underestimate Harry, because he was young and because he was supposed be the gentle savior who sacrificed his life to save the world and didn’t live to trouble them afterwards.  
  
 _You’d think the Heir of Slytherin nonsense would have cured them of the notion that I’ll always do what they want._  
  
“If Slytherins always plot evil,” he said, “what about me? I’m a Gryffindor. What do we plot? Sir.” He wanted to appear respectful on the surface, just in case they tried to throw him out of the courtroom and try his vassals without him. He didn’t think they would, though. It was simply too tempting for them to accuse him along with all the others.  
  
The white-haired wizard watched him with frozen eyes. They probably would have made Harry shut up when he was in his fourth year and still convinced that some of the adults in the wizarding world knew best.  
  
But not in his fifth year, when his anger was exploding, and not in his sixth year, when he had learned exactly how much the war could cost, and not in his seventh year, when it seemed like no one else was  _doing_ anything.  
  
“The answer to that is simple,” said the white-haired wizard at last, when it seemed that the silence had gone on long enough to wear grooves in the floor. “You have been taken in by Slytherins. Used by them. I said the bond was deliberate, Mr. Potter. That does not mean that you were the one to cause it. I believe that the Slytherins caused it, that they wanted your political protection, the protection your name could give them, from the trials that they  _knew_ would happen once the war was over and they no longer had Albus Dumbledore interfering for them.”  
  
Another stir from the audience. For all Harry knew, that was the kind of story that the vast majority of the crowd would like to believe. Something that made him misguided, instead of evil.  
  
Too bad that Harry wasn’t interested in having them believe it.  
  
“Will you explain how they could cast it when You-Know-Who was casting a spell at the same time and no one else except me and Dumbledore had ever managed to stand up to him?” Harry asked in an interested tone. “Because it was Voldemort’s spell that I stood up to, you know.” Yes, there was the flinch, running like a wave through the Wizengamot. “I’d be interested in seeing what your magical theory experts have to say about that.”  
  
The white-haired wizard turned to face the far door of the courtroom, opposite the one that Harry and his vassals had entered by, and it opened. A hooded figure stepped in, but Harry knew her from her movements.  
  
“Healer Kislik,” he said. “You  _do_ have a varied career.”


	41. Healer Kislik

“Do you know something about the Healer that we do not?” The white-haired wizard’s voice was still booming from everywhere. Harry was glad that he hadn’t been too involved in his study of Kislik, or he might have started when it boomed right at him and made the white-haired wizard decide that that trick was working. “She is a magical theory expert on Lordship bonds, and she is our trusted witness.”  
  
Harry glanced at the Wizengamot. He saw some people who were leaning away from the speaker as if trying to distance themselves, so he reckoned there might be somebody who would listen to him. “She was part of the group calling themselves the Freedom Fighters who tried to attack Grimmauld Place when I was there.”  
  
Kislik didn’t falter, but stood with her hands clasped in front of her, looking the picture of helpful and content. She only shook her head a little, as though grieved that Harry thought that was true. “I have witnesses who will swear that I was elsewhere at the time,” she said.  
  
“And I have memories that will say you were there,” Harry snarled.  
  
Kislik only looked at him. Harry had no idea whether her witnesses would be more trusted than he was, or whether the Wizengamot would make her take Veritaserum, the way they really should.  
  
“It seems that you do not trust our witness,” said the white-haired wizard, apparently from the door. “But we do.”  
  
“What kinds of studies has she done on Lordship bonds?” Harry asked, playing for time. He thought the white-haired wizard would probably enjoy reciting all the accomplishments that supposedly made Kislik a good witness, so it might actually buy them a lot of time.  
  
“She has worked with Healers who sought to free Lords and Ladies from unwanted bonds with vassals numerous times,” began the white-haired wizard. “She has…”  
  
And off he went, listing them, while Harry locked eyes with Kislik and tried to determine what he should do. He wondered if it was dangerous to look at her, but he didn’t think so. She wouldn’t want to try Legilimency right here, in the middle of the Ministry, right after Pansy’s comment had made the speaker of the Wizengamot deny so forcefully that the Ministry supported its use.  
  
But she didn’t look as though she was afraid of anything he might say. Maybe she had the whole Wizengamot on a leash. Maybe some of them were secret Freedom Fighters. Maybe she thought that their hatred of Harry would be enough to make them go along with everything she might say, even though they didn’t know her.  
  
“I want to request to take Veritaserum,” Harry said.  
  
The white-haired wizard’s voice took a moment to fade, as though he couldn’t believe someone had interrupted him. And then he leaned forwards and stared very hard at Harry, shaking his head so that his hair flowed back over his shoulders. “What?” he whispered. “You want to  _what_?”  
  
“Someone can request Veritaserum and get it, right?” Harry looked from face to face, seeing so many frozen stares that he wondered if he had tripped into one of their traps on accident. “The only thing that’s illegal is trying to force someone to take it when they don’t want to, right?”  
  
Someone had hold of his arm. Harry didn’t look over to see who it was. It could be anyone from one of his horrified vassals to one of his horrified friends to Auror Stone, who might fear that the Wizengamot might not look kindly on some of her own exploits. But Harry felt no twinge from the bond, which meant that he wasn’t causing his vassals unacceptable distress.   
  
“I am astonished that you think you would want to take Veritaserum,” said a tall wizard who sat on the opposite side of the woman Harry thought looked like a vulture. “Someone like you, a Dark wizard with so many secrets to hide. Would you really want to?”  
  
“The Veritaserum should prove if I’m a Dark wizard,” Harry answered, gaze locked on Healer Kislik’s. “And if I’m lying about the attack that Healer Kislik was there for.”  
  
Kislik looked at him with a still face. “It will prove that you were lying, yes,” she said, as if Harry was someone mentally deficient, who couldn’t understand why she would deny this. “Because I wasn’t there.”  
  
Harry turned back to the Wizengamot. There was really no point in talking to her, he had decided. She was a fanatic. Someone who would never understand that there was more to the world than simple little views about slavery and Lordship bonds.  
  
He knew that because he had changed his mind about those complicated things, and he knew how painful it had been. He didn’t think Kislik had it in her to face up to the same process.  
  
“Well?” he asked the crowd staring at him. Sometimes he felt as though the most important moments of his life had always happened with crowds staring at him. “Can I do it?”  
  
*  
  
 _You idiot._  
  
Cold fear shimmered in Severus, the kind that he had felt before this only when he knelt at the Dark Lord’s feet and knew that his Occlumency shields might not be enough. He wanted to snarl, to rave, to tear into the boy, to curse him. To say that he had thought better of him than this, that he had  _trusted_ the boy with some of his protection the way he had once trusted Albus, and look where it had got him.  
  
But he could not speak aloud like that, or he would make the situation look worse than it did already. Instead, Severus had to stand there and hold his tongue, hold the curses in, hold in the chance to rescue the moment.  
  
There was so much that Potter might give away if he took the Veritaserum. Did he consider that, the secrets he might spill?  
  
But of course not. Gryffindors always chose the dramatic gesture over the right one. Albus had done that with so many of his decisions, and even Lily had, when she chose the way she reacted to James Potter’s prank and Severus’s own unfortunate outburst.  
  
Severus did not allow himself to bite his lip, because that would give the game away to someone who knew enough to watch him as the guiltiest of  _Lord Potter’s_ vassals. He remained still instead, and watched the white-haired wizard look around as if for support. For some reason, not much was forthcoming.  
  
“Let the boy take it, if he wants,” the white-haired wizard said finally, and not in the booming voice he had used so far. “Why not? If he says that he has nothing to hide, then he should be able to tell us everything about the bond. He would make a most  _reliable_ witness.”  
  
He drew the adjective out, but the support still did not appear. Severus glanced from face to face as much as he could while moving his eyes only. Deepening frowns were starting to life on the lips of most there. They stirred restlessly and whispered to each other. The witch who had leaned out and spoken a few times stood up now.   
  
Severus looked at her vivid, almost bronze hair and searched his memory for the name. Yes, there it was. Una Ollondors.  
  
“You haven’t considered what a farce it would become, Jenkyns,” Ollondors said, and she could sound sensible when she wanted to. Severus remembered Albus talking about her, and commenting that it was a pity that her fits of sense were so few. “They would begin to talk about how we forced him, how there were so many other things that we could have done instead, and we chose this, the most invasive and legally questionable. The press would have a wonderful time with it. We already know that they’re reporting anything they can get their hands on about how we mistreated the boy.”  
  
 _And if you had handled a sensitive situation with grace instead of only thinking that you must destroy someone with the power to be a political enemy,_ Severus thought,  _they would have nothing to report. Or nothing that Potter did not immediately contradict._  
  
“But he’s volunteering to take the Veritaserum,” Jenkyns said, and twisted around to stare up at Ollondors. “How could anyone say it was illegal?”  
  
Ollondors sneered at him. “You trust the press to make such a distinction? When it comes to Harry Potter?” She shook her head. “No. They never have, and they swing from his side to others’ like a pendulum blown by the wind.”  
  
 _Of course,_ Severus thought, and his heartbeat slowed as a measure of control over the situation came back to him—although, from the puzzled stares of Jenkyns and Potter, he was the only one of the important players other than Ollondors who had grasped the reason she was doing this.  _She doesn’t want Potter to take Veritaserum because she’s worried about what else would come out if he did. Probably including the truth about how the Ministry treated him during the war, or during their first conversation with him when he was brought into custody._  
  
“No one in the press could report what he said under Veritaserum unless one of us broke confidence.”  
  
“And he already found out about the vote.” Ollondors folded her arms. “Do you really want him to start earning sympathy for something  _else_?”  
  
“We settled that he was listening at the door, Ollondors!” Jenkyns looked as if he would have liked to aim his staff at this new and irritating target.  
  
“We didn’t. Not to my satisfaction.”  
  
Jenkyns continued staring, as if he couldn’t understand this rebellion. Severus relaxed even more, certain he could. None of the Wizengamot wanted to be ousted from comfortable positions in what they viewed as the heart of the wizarding world. They would go along with efforts to prosecute Potter—as long as they seemed likely to succeed. But when they no longer did, they would turn on the one who had led that effort in order to save themselves.  
  
For the first time since Potter had foolishly mentioned that he knew about the vote the Wizengamot had taken, Severus felt that perhaps it was not a disastrous move.  
  
The shield mark on his arm burned, but he ignored it. So what if Potter had known what he was doing? It didn’t remove the danger of what  _could_ have happened if the Wizengamot wasn’t inevitably venal.  
  
“Can we discuss something else?”  
  
It took Severus a moment to realize who had spoken. He turned back to the Healer who wanted to kill them in the name of saving them, who had her hands held out as though she was imploring peace in the middle of a war.  
  
“We were going to discuss the nature of the bond and the way that it was formed,” Kislik said. “We were going to discuss the unfortunate fate of these people who should never have been slaves in the first place.”  
  
And she turned her head and sought out his gaze, as if she knew by instinct how much he had hated and resented the bond. Severus gazed back, and shuddered a little. She looked and  _seemed_ sincere, and it was indeed possible that he might have given in and believed her before this, convinced that he had an ally against Potter.  
  
But gaining distance from the bond had convinced him which were his own thoughts and which were not. The bond might seek to influence him, and his hatred was his own, but he knew that there were some good things that had come out of this, like the political protection Potter could afford him. What Kislik wanted to do was unknown, the measure of desperation, and Severus could see it as such from the crystalline position he had attained.  
  
“Yes, why not ignore procedure and interrupt the Wizengamot while they’re talking?” Potter asked. “Nothing else about this trial is going to rule, after all.”  
  
“They invited me here to speak,” said Kislik. “That means that I may speak.” She turned to consider Jenkyns and Ollondors. “May I finish?”  
  
“Please, Healer Kislik,” said Jenkyns ceremoniously, and waved one hand as though he was granting her personal permission. Severus sneered. He probably wasn’t.  
  
“Such a powerful bond could never have formed accidentally,” said Kislik. “It must require some control from the caster.” She nodded at the ridiculous silver flames that Potter had called to blaze around his arms. “That shows that he’s in control of the bond, far more than he showed at the time. He was clever enough to wait to reveal that control, but not clever enough to think what would happen when he demonstrated it in the courtroom.”  
  
Potter blinked down at the flames as though he had never considered that the twinkle of them might betray him. Severus bit back a groan. Did the wretched boy never  _think_ before he leaped?  
  
“Yes,” Potter said, looking up. “That’s right.”  
  
Kislik stared at him. Jenkyns stared at him. Ollondors stared at him. Severus could feel the rest of the vassals doing so as well, and the Malfoys, and Potter’s friends, and only hoped that he was not doing the same witless gaping.  
  
“I was so clever and powerful that I managed to block a spell from Voldemort when I was also trying to  _kill_ him,” Potter said, his voice rising a little. “If I’m that powerful, can you tell me why I didn’t just kill Voldemort years ago?”  
  
“You didn’t want to kill him as much as you wanted to possess free and living human souls,” Kislik said, in a way that made Severus curl his lip. It was clear that she believed what she was saying, and he had had enough of fanatics when he was dealing with Death Eaters.  
  
“No,” said Potter. “It’s my bloody luck, is what it is. Again and again. I stumble into these situations. I have Parseltongue, and I’m the target of Voldemort’s anger, and I almost get killed by Dementors and then get hauled into the Ministry for breaking the ban on underage magic, and I’m chosen as the Tri-wizard Champion even though I didn’t  _want_ to be, and now this. Just my bloody, rotten,  _bloody_ luck.”  
  
“That could also be a sign that you are extraordinarily powerful,” said Kislik, waving her hand. “All of that. Including surviving the Killing Curse when you were a child, and again when You-Know-Who threw it at you.”  
  
Potter rolled his eyes. “But that’s not the way that people have been  _acting_. You wouldn’t have come and faced me with just a little group of people if you thought I was so powerful, would you? You wouldn’t have thought that you could bring down my house around my ears?”  
  
Severus shook his head. This was the wrong tactic. Fanatics would never admit that anything had gone wrong with their plans, or that they were less than absolutely right.  
  
Kislik had a faint smile on her face, as if she wanted to convey that to Potter but didn’t know how. When she spoke, her words had a tinge of sadness to them even fainter than the smile. “I did that because of what I believe in.”  
  
Severus’s first thought was that perhaps Kislik was not an ordinary fanatic after all, if she could spend some time thinking beyond her immediate impulses like that.  
  
Then he realized what else she had said.  
  
And Potter’s face had changed, and he was grinning at the Wizengamot as if they had all become vassals under the bond at once. “Did you hear that?” he asked, jerking a thumb at Kislik. “What she just  _admitted_?”  
  
“I did not—” began Kislik, and her face was very pale and her eyes were very wide.  
  
Ollondors was on her feet again. “This is the exact thing that I was worried about,” she snarled at Jenkyns, as if she had foreseen this and it was all his fault. Severus was sure that she had not, or she would have refused to participate in this farce from the beginning, but it probably made her look good to anyone weak enough to believe her in the first place. “That we’re going to look  _foolish_ in front of the wizarding world for the way we try Harry Potter. And now it’s happening. Couldn’t you even bring yourself to ensure that your magical theory expert wasn’t a liar who would reveal herself?”  
  
For the first time since the beginning of this supposed trial, Severus saw Jenkyns look uncomfortable. He put one hand on his staff, and then seemed to remember that threatening a fellow member of the Wizengamot was inappropriate. He leaned it back against his chair again, and then paused and gave a helpless look around.   
  
“Yes,” Potter prompted. “He could have brought himself to realize it, if he was focused on justice and not getting rid of me for whatever political crimes he thinks I’ve committed.”  
  
Ollondors faced Potter, and there was a rapid transformation in her face that melting butter couldn’t have bettered. She clenched her hands in her robes and bowed a little, as though she was honoring Potter’s power or something.  
  
Severus wanted to put his hand over his eyes. He knew that Potter hadn’t planned this, either. He was actually as lucky and without clever plans as he had told the Wizengamot he was. Ollondors hadn’t plotted with Potter, she had seen the chance to take power in this particular situation and seized it.  
  
And Kislik had condemned herself out of her own mouth by not being careful enough.  
  
Severus was not sure whether he could resent that luck when it was going to protect his own interests, but he was prepared to try.  
  
*  
  
Harry swallowed as he saw the vulture-faced woman—her name was Ollondorf or something—bowing to him. Or maybe it was a curtsey. He couldn’t remember. Were witches supposed to give curtsies?  
  
He couldn’t remember, really. The only witch he had ever spent a lot of time with was Hermione, and she wasn’t in the habit of curtseying to anyone.  
  
“I’m sorry for agreeing to the plan to bring the Healer here, now,” Ollondorf said, and inclined her head in Kislik’s direction as though she was a stranger she’d just met in the street. “I didn’t know that she wasn’t what she claimed to be. But someone who would fight against all Lords in all bonds—I really ought to have known better.”  
  
“You  _agreed_ ,” said the white-haired wizard. His name was Jenkyns, Harry remembered.  
  
“At the time,” said Ollondorf, or maybe the name was Ollondors. She faced Harry and clasped her hands across her chest in what Harry thought was a parody of honesty. “Can you forgive me, Lord Potter?”  
  
Harry studied her for a second. He was sure that she wasn’t doing this for him. Maybe she had always wanted to get back at Jenkyns for something, or she just thought it was a good chance to seize power in the Wizengamot.   
  
Maybe he shouldn’t question more of the luck that he had already suggested to them was always saving his arse.  
  
“Of course,” he said, and tried to sound sufficiently Lordly. Or maybe it was better to sound like a meek and scared little boy, which was what he was really trying to convince them he was. Fuck, he didn’t know. He wanted to be done with these trials, and this one had barely even started.  
  
But he was the one who had chosen to come in here and fight on behalf of his vassals. He could have released every single one of them from the bond, which made every single step he took after the point where he had meditated to regain control of the bond a choice.  
  
Maybe he should go ahead and face the challenges as they came up, and stop trying to second-guess either himself or the people watching him.  
  
“Of course,” he repeated, more strongly, when he saw that Ollondors and the rest of them were waiting for more than just his bare words. “I think—I think that it would be best if we could begin this with a completely clean slate, right? I forget about how you took that vote on my guilt or innocence, and we begin the trial over with  _proper_ procedures, this time. Including someone who can advise me on the exact legal limits of the bond and what I’ll be responsible for if my vassals go to prison.”  
  
Ollondors smiled, and crocodiles had nothing on her. “How kind of you, Lord Potter. And how prescient. I was about to suggest the same thing myself.”  
  
“You have no right,” said Jenkyns, and stood up with the staff in his hand. “You agreed to this. The trial has begun. Lord Potter is already  _being_ tried. He listened at the door. This is what should be done.”  
  
“Including you pointing a staff that’s obviously dangerous and could hurt someone at one of my vassals?” Harry asked flatly.  
  
Jenkyns turned and stared at him. Harry looked back. It hadn’t really occurred to him at the time, since he was flying through this blind, and frankly he’d had more important things to worry about, but yeah, now that he thought about it, he was pretty bloody  _furious_.  
  
“This is part of how the trials work,” said Jenkyns. “People who are dangerous need to be contained.” He sneered at Auror Stone. “Someone has not done their jobs properly, but it is not the Wizengamot.”  
  
Harry could feel Auror Stone’s silence beside him, as heavy as her name. He wondered if she was sorry that she had ever signed up to serve the Ministry. It must have been hard to see them get ready to turn on her.  
  
Then Auror Stone looked off into the distance, and seemed to smile at something. “This is not how trials are supposed to go,” she said. “The trial should have begun with the exact charges being stated, and experts being sought for both sides. Magical theory experts, in the case of a complicated bond such as this. Lawyers.”  
  
Jenkyns’s face twisted. Ollondors clasped her hands to her chest again and raised her eyes to the ceiling. Harry stared at her. She looked like she was praying.  
  
Maybe she was just happy that she was finally going to get control of the Wizengamot, Harry thought. He hoped so, because otherwise this was pretty bloody terrifying.  
  
“You know the reasons why this is being done,” Jenkyns whispered.  
  
“Not really,” said Auror Stone. “I don’t know the reason why I was accused of not doing my job when I brought Lord Potter and his vassals into the courtroom, under exactly as many restraints as I was told to use. I don’t know the reason that you apparently took a secret and biased vote on Lord Potter before he entered the courtroom.” She looked across the room at Kislik, still standing silent. “I don’t know why you invited a sworn foe of Lord Potter, and someone with ties to the deaths of several Lords and Ladies, to stand across from him and offer testimony.”  
  
Kislik turned and left the room. Harry didn’t really care about stopping her. Something more important was happening here.  
  
“Yes, I think it  _imperative_  to begin the trial over,” said Ollondors, and gave Jenkyns a hard look. It didn’t seem as if he disagreed. Ollondors swirled her robes around her and faced Auror Stone. “Can we do that?”  
  
Auror Stone bowed. “I would certainly be happy to take the prisoners back outside the courtroom and bring them in again—that is, for the first time, ma’am.”  
  
And then it seemed that she and almost everyone else in the room looked at Harry.  
  
Harry snorted softly. “Do I look as if have an objection?”  
  
 _A proper trial. They’re going to get a proper trial._  
  
 _Maybe it had to happen because of greed and stupidity and trivial infighting, but at least they’re getting one._


	42. Caroline Changes

“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do for you.”   
  
Harry smiled at the woman putting her bags and what looked like the world’s largest collection of ledgers down on the table in front of him. “That’s honest, at least,” he said. “And I would rather have an honest lawyer than one who’s anything else.”  
  
“What about ‘good at their job?’” The witch put her hands on her hips in a way that reminded Harry of Molly Weasley and surveyed them all for a moment. Harry was sitting at the table in the small room the Wizengamot had granted them to meet with their lawyer with Greg standing at his shoulder. Ron and Hermione stood off to the side, as near the door as they could get; Harry knew they were watching the Malfoys and the Aurors, to make sure that no one went for his back. The Malfoys, meanwhile, might have been in their own world, standing among the Auror guard and staring at the far wall. If they did talk, it was only to each other. Blaise was off to the side with his arms folded, his expression more remote than Lucius’s.  
  
Draco stood about halfway between his parents and Harry, glancing back and forth as though he didn’t know where his first loyalty lay. He caught Harry’s eye and flushed, turning to stare at the floor.  
  
Severus and Pansy were further back, near Auror Stone. Harry could confirm that much without turning his head, as he felt them through the bond. He wasn’t sure what the barrister, who had introduced herself as Caroline Changes, saw, but after a moment, she nodded and sat down at the table in front of him. She was as tall as Aunt Petunia, but a little plumper, and her dark hair and her purple robes were both held down with a severity that made Harry think she might be able to control even the Wizengamot’s outbursts.  
  
“Let me make one thing clear,” said Changes, catching Harry’s eye. “I defend people accused of a crime by the Wizengamot. I take my instructions through the Wizengamot and their solicitors, and I know the laws and tactics that they usually employ in cases like this.”  
  
Harry snorted. “There have been other cases like this?”  
  
“A point,” said Changes. She had a quick smile, one that flickered and then was gone, and then she clasped her hands in front of her and gave him a pointed glance. “But there have been cases dealing with Lordship bonds before, and even ones that formed accidentally or unwillingly. That is what the Wizengamot has informed me they are charging you with.”  
  
“So it’s like enslavement?” Harry wondered if that would mean there would be people in the audience sympathetic to the Freedom Fighters.  
  
Changes shrugged. “There’s no enslavement law anymore, since different contracts were negotiated with the magical creatures and the Wizengamot sees itself as having treaties with them. Or truces, sometimes, or no contact at all. The official position is that one cannot enslave a human. Life-debts and curses and Lordship bonds and the like are all seen as something different. Not  _treated_ the same way, always, mind you, because some of them form spontaneously, like life-debts, and are regulated by magic itself. And one can’t really do anything about an Unbreakable Vow formed unwillingly, since the Vow is going to punish the person who took it if they break it, regardless of what the legal authorities might have to say about it.”  
  
Harry could feel Severus’s breath on the back of his neck in the next instant, as though he had moved across the room until he was standing right behind Harry. Well, he could feel that  _and_ the stiffness that had invaded his limbs. Harry almost reached out a hand to touch his arm, but remembered that he hadn’t  _really_ moved and it wouldn’t do any good. He did his best to focus on Changes’s words instead.  
  
Hermione spoke before he could. “Then the Wizengamot doesn’t consider what it’s done to the house-elves as slavery?”  
  
Changes picked up a piece of paper, put it down again. “No. The ties that house-elves have to their individual families are considered spontaneous magical bonds of the kind formed by life-debts. There’s nothing that can be done to regulate them, and the Wizengamot has declared them beyond their purview.”  
  
“That’s just what they  _would_ say,” Hermione muttered. She turned away again to whisper to Ron. After a minute of watching her, Changes shook her head and turned back to Harry.  
  
“But Lordship bonds are viewed as a kind of contract that’s entered into,” said Changes. “Not as spontaneously as something like a life-debt. An unwilling Lordship bond would be the equivalent of, oh, forcing someone to surrender a precious heirloom to avoid the threat of blackmail. It puts the Lord or Lady in a position of power that they shouldn’t have. Still, it’s not the same as slavery.”  
  
Harry nodded. He was glad that the Freedom Fighters were viewed as outsiders and fanatics by at least  _some_ people in wizarding society, and he wasn’t the weird one for opposing them. “Okay. And they’re going to say that the bond was accidental, so there’s no way that it could have been willing?”  
  
“Exactly.” Changes put a hand up to her hair for a second, as though she intended to pat a strand back into place and then realized she didn’t have to. “I’m glad that you understand the nuances. So. What we had better rely on is the contention that, because it was an _accident_ , you did not mean to put anyone under an obligation to you as a vassal. You didn’t, did you?”  
  
“Of course not!” Harry shook his head wildly, then calmed down a little once he realized that Changes did look as if she believed him. “I didn’t even know that Lordship bonds existed or what they did until after that.”  
  
Changes smiled. “In that case, your naïveté is our best defense.”  
  
“What about the things I’ve learned since then?” Harry hunched his shoulders a little. He thought Blaise was looking at him. “I mean, I’ve gained control of the bond since then, and I can release people from it if I want to.”  
  
Changes sat up. “I assume that you’ve already released one person?” She was turning her gaze from face to face, although Harry didn’t know if she realized just from looking who it was.  
  
Harry nodded. “If I let all of them go—”  
  
“Except me,” Greg said, loudly enough to make both Harry and Changes start.  
  
“Right,” Harry said. “I promised that you’d stay with me, and you will.” He smiled reassuringly at Greg and turned to Changes, who was staring at Greg with a flat expression. “Will the Wizengamot not prosecute me, or them, if I let them go? Is it going to be worse that I still have them with me if I can release them?”  
  
Changes spent a few minutes frowning, and a few more hunting through the papers in front of her. Harry waited, content to let the minutes pass by. Greg was almost breathing down his neck now, but Harry thought that could be excused. He had had that moment of fright that Harry was breaking his promise.  
  
The reactions of the others were more controlled: the sparks of nervousness from Draco and Pansy, and then something like a fire burning in a muffled hearth from Severus. Harry rolled his eyes. He wished he knew  _what_ the git had done to the bond from his end. Harry only knew for sure that it was nothing he himself had done. He had had to concentrate pretty hard to make the change that released Blaise. It was nothing that could have happened by accident.  
  
“I think that it won’t matter,” Changes said at last, looking up. “You could still be prosecuted for keeping them under control against their will, the way that someone could still be prosecuted for blackmail even if they destroyed the blackmail material later.”  
  
Harry sighed. “Good.” He had planned so much on the strategy of holding onto his vassals throughout the trials, at least, so they would be safe, that it would have been hard to start over with planning something else. And he didn’t—  
  
He didn’t want to let them go, either. He suspected that was probably the bond affecting him, altering his mind, the way that it had altered Draco’s mind to get him to stop arguing. But it had happened, and he couldn’t resent it so much now. He knew that letting Blaise go had been too hard for him to be eager to repeat the experience.  
  
“In the meantime,” Changes said, leaning forwards and tapping her finger on a piece of parchment she had laid in front of Harry, “my guess is that they’ll try you one by one. And you first. You’re the biggest prize they have, and the most scandalous trial.”  
  
“Do you think you can get me declared innocent, or acquitted, or whatever the right term is?” Harry asked, looking into her eyes. He saw they had gone flat again, the way they had when she looked at Greg, but at least she didn’t turn away.  
  
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “So much is going to depend on the Wizengamot and the questions they ask. You’ve defeated at least one hostile witness, but there could be others. There’s fear of you, and of the way that you manage to get secrets leaked to the press even though you shouldn’t be able to. I don’t suppose you  _are_ going to tell me how you did that, are you?” she added, in a tone that said she didn’t expect it.  
  
Harry gave her a reserved smile. Skeeter’s Animagus form wasn’t his secret to let slip, at least not to someone he didn’t know.  
  
“Fine,” Changes said. “I’ll try as hard as I can. But I can’t guarantee it.”  
  
“If I go to Azkaban, do all my vassals come with me?” Harry sat up. He would free them before he let that happen. Even Greg. Greg would be able to find someone else to support him and command him more easily than he would be able to stand Azkaban.  
  
“What?” Changes’s face had turned pale. “Of course not! You will not—they wouldn’t dare put you in Azkaban. The price for an unwilling Lordship bond is a fine, or other restitution to the families you victimized, and releasing your vassals. Going to Azkaban was never in question.”  
  
“It might be,” said Ron, coming forwards a step and then stopping as if he didn’t know whether it would be good to intrude on the conversation. “When you consider it’s Harry and they want to stop him and stick him somewhere, they might dare.”  
  
Changes frowned harder than ever. Harry thought he could see other lines in her face where the same frown had probably made its presence known. “I do not think it will come to that. They know they would face strong public opposition if that happened.” She paused and seemed to evaluate what she had just said. “They must know it,” she repeated, more uneasily.  
  
Ron shook his head. “They dared to give Harry that first farce of a trial despite everything. They might get desperate.”  
  
“The Wizengamot is slow and ponderous, not desperate.” Changes straightened her back. “We will use that fact against it.”  
  
“Then you’ve come up with a tactic to use, other than just the fact that I didn’t know what Lordship bonds were?” Harry bit his lip when he heard the rising note of hope in his voice. He probably sounded childish. And while that might help him in front of the Wizengamot, he didn’t want to sound like it here.  
  
Changes looked him dead in the eye. “I have, if you agree.”  
  
“Explain it to me,” Harry said, and leaned forwards. He could sense Hermione doing the same, and Ron, and Pansy and Greg, and even Lucius Malfoy.  
  
Severus continued to simmer sullenly to himself, and Draco was watching everything with wide, anxious eyes. Well, Harry thought, as he pushed the awareness of them to the back of his mind, he was doing the best he could to preserve their lives and freedom; he would just have to face the less immediate challenges later.  
  
*  
  
Draco wondered why his stomach should have dropped when Harry talked about releasing him.  
  
It was the best thing, he knew. If not right now, because they had the trials to get through, eventually. Of course he wanted to be free. Someday he would have to be  _the_ Malfoy, and get married, and otherwise do everything he could to carry on his family’s tradition and bloodline. How could he do that if he was bound as vassal to a Lord?  
  
It wasn’t so much the vassalage itself. His father had been bound to the Dark Lord, after all, if not in the exact same way. But the problem was, this kind of formal Lordship bond was usually undertaken by weak wizards who needed formal protection, and Draco couldn’t have that kind of reputation if he expected people to look up to him.  
  
 _Do I want that kind of life?_  
  
Draco caught and held his breath. Then he shook his head. He was aware that Granger was looking at him, but he decided to disregard that. She couldn’t read his thoughts and emotions the way Harry could through the bond.  
  
Yes, he wanted that kind of life. A Malfoy either had it or had nothing at all. Maybe Draco didn’t like politics and intrigue that much, maybe he wished his ancestors had made a different choice, but the fact was, they hadn’t. And Draco had to do it to safeguard his money and his children and pass on the tradition. Political favors and bribes and like were how the Malfoys had grown their fortune in the first place.  
  
Except…  
  
Except.   
  
Draco swallowed. There were times that he thought he wanted something else.  
  
Something that had nothing to do with the Ministry or politics or the chance that he might go to Azkaban, the way his father had, the way his father had been threatened with in the first war, the way his mother might be threatened. Something that had nothing to do with the shadows, and everything to do with the sunlight.  
  
Draco had cast enough Dark Arts during the war to last him a lifetime. If anyone asked if he could do that, sure he could. But he was tired of it. And he was sick of torture, and fear, and suffering. He wanted to be free because he would have  _no_ options in Azkaban, but he didn’t want the kind of freedom that Lucius had said he would prefer. He wouldn’t do with it what he knew his father would do with it.  
  
 _That means nothing now. You don’t even know if you’re going to survive the trial. You might as well wait and see if you’re getting the Dementor’s Kiss or Azkaban or house arrest or what._  
  
Draco roughly shoved the thoughts away, and focused back on Harry and Changes. And if he hoped that he could stay with Harry, well, he didn’t really want to think about that, either. The recoil from torture, he thought, was all him. The desire to stay with Harry was more likely to be the bond.  
  
Maybe he was thinking about that right now because he couldn’t influence his immediate fate one way or the other, so he was thinking about something he  _could_. But either way, he needed to pay attention to what was right in front of him, and understand the tactics. Maybe he could advise Harry if he did something stupid, that way.  
  
*  
  
“I plan to show the court that you formed the bond out of a protective instinct, but that it was pure luck that it manifested as a bond. It could and  _should_ have been a Shield Charm, the way you planned on.”  
  
Blaise shivered and stared at the floor. Then he decided that wasn’t enough, and shut his eyes and gagged. Potter didn’t notice. Of course he didn’t, since he didn’t have the parasitic connection to Blaise’s soul and mind that he’d had in the past.  
  
How could anyone  _doubt_ that Potter had formed the bond on purpose? Sure, maybe he hadn’t known what would happen. Blaise was willing to believe that in the same way he was willing to believe that his grandfather hadn’t meant to be such a good Lord that he neglected to be a good father.  
  
 _Can you hear me, Mother? Can you feel me coming back to you?_  
  
But Potter had to have an instinctive desire for power and control, or the bond would never have manifested at all. Potter wanted to be a leader. Hadn’t he had lots of special training for that? Hadn’t he led the war effort, if only from a distance? Hadn’t he led the Gryffindors and the ridiculous Defense Association that Blaise had heard rumors about and even the Gryffindor Quidditch team?  
  
No, Potter had the same corrupt desire that Blaise’s mother had told him about and told him to avoid: the desire to enslave someone else’s free will and feed on their strength, until he made the strong weak.  
  
 _Maybe she would accept me back if I told her that, told her I understand now. I’m not naturally weak. Potter made me weak._  
  
“The Wizengamot might still order you to release the other people in the bond,” the lawyer continued quietly to Potter. “But they can’t do much more than that, if they accept and believe in the defense. It would be like punishing a child for accidental magic.”  
  
Blaise’s eyes popped open before he could stop them. Luckily, the lawyer didn’t appear to notice.  
  
 _But of course you can punish a child for accidental magic. They might still break or destroy something. What other recourse would you have?_  
  
Blaise wondered what the lawyer would say if she met his mother, and then shuddered. He was glad she never would. The violence of the encounter would spill over onto Blaise himself somehow, he was certain. He would be to blame for it somehow, even though he wouldn’t know how.  
  
“I see.” Potter’s voice was low. “But what else are we going to use to defend me? Just that one claim can’t be enough.”  
  
Blaise nodded grudgingly. Potter had his moments of intelligence. Not enough, in Blaise’s opinion, but the sort that would sometimes pop up and save him and his friends an untimely death.  
  
“Of course I’ll be using precedent and laws that you know nothing about.” The lawyer’s voice was brisk. Blaise had the feeling that his mother would have liked her if they’d met in other situations. “But you don’t need to worry about them. They’re for me to argue and debate and come up with. I need you to be ready to tell the truth.” She paused. “And tell me the truth about the vassal you freed from the bond. Why did you do it? The knowledge that you  _could_ change the bond like that might weaken our position, and make some people think it was deliberate from the beginning.”  
  
Blaise sat up.  
  
“It  _wasn’t_ ,” Potter said. His voice was still irritating to listen to, but at least his contempt no longer stung Blaise’s skin when he expressed it.  
  
“I know that,” said the lawyer, although Blaise wondered if the soothing tone of her voice concealed her disbelief. “I’m talking about the impression you might convey to the public, which includes the Wizengamot in this case. Not the reality.  _My_ impression was that your public hadn’t always been adoring.”  
  
“You’ve got that right.”  
  
Blaise blinked. He felt as though someone had poured a reviving trickle of cold water down his throat when he was dying of thirst.  
  
The lawyer and Potter went on, discussing all sorts of things that probably mattered to them, and would probably also matter to the trial, but Blaise didn’t see a reason to listen to them. He was thinking.  
  
The Wizengamot would look for witnesses to the bond. They would question the vassals, probably. Blaise discounted any testimony that Draco could give, or Mr. Malfoy, either. It was perfectly clear that Potter had the vassals still under the bond on a leash, and Mr. Malfoy would cooperate for fear of harm coming to Draco if he didn’t.  
  
But no one had the ability to control Blaise. If he was under trial for his actions during the war, then Potter couldn’t offer him any protection now, one way or the other. He could stand up in front of them and speak his mind.  
  
He could even lie, if he wanted to. To make Potter look worse than he was. Someone should do it, and they wouldn’t feed him Veritaserum unless he agreed to take it.  
  
Blaise envisioned himself standing up in front of the courtroom, his voice coming out swift and clear and unafraid, his eyes meeting the gaze of Wizengamot member after Wizengamot member. He had never been in a situation like that before, and hadn’t often pictured it, either. He didn’t have political ambitions the way Pansy did. He wanted to be of use to his mother, and he wanted to be strong. Politics required too much compromise at the lower levels. Only when you got to the higher ones could you be your own person, but you had to pass through those lower levels first.  
  
But if he could stand up like that, and draw attention to himself, and walk away unscathed—or better, with unfavorable attention directed to Potter, and the insult that had been his own slavery avenged…  
  
Wouldn’t his mother take him back? Wouldn’t she watch him in the newspaper photographs, or through the rumors of her extensive contacts, and understand that he was becoming a strong person again, someone to admire?  
  
He could prove that he was independent, in his own way. Capable of assisting her, if she would reverse her judgment about his weakness. Blaise hadn’t broken free of the slavery Potter held him in on his own, but he could do something that would repay Potter a thousandfold, and make sure that he never had the chance to clap like chains on Blaise in future years. If Potter remained free of Azkaban, Blaise thought he would always fear that chance, no matter how small it was.  
  
He had the chance. He could make his mother respect him, and the public, and Potter.  
  
It was worth it.


	43. Harry Potter

“Do you think they’ll only try me on the charges of enslaving people with an accidental bond that you were talking about?” Harry asked, trying to adjust the collar of his robe around his neck so it was more comfortable. “Or on the original charges of using Unforgivables? That was something I confessed to.”  
  
“What they told me all concerned the charges that came with the bond.” Changes swept dust off the sleeve of her own robe and gave him a critical glance, then nodded. “You’ll do, I think. Except…” She moved forwards and began to adjust his hair. Harry rolled his eyes, but let her. She would find out soon enough that it never did what anyone told it.  
  
“And you’re taking advice and instruction from the Wizengamot,” he said.  
  
Changes glanced at him sideways. “If you have a better idea, I would be happy to hear it. There’s no way to anticipate all the charges they’ll bring up, and I  _am_ a barrister appointed by the Wizengamot.”  
  
Harry winced a little and smiled at her. “Sorry. I know—I know that you’re doing the best you can for us, better than I thought someone who worked for the Wizengamot would.”  
  
Changes plucked at her own robe collar. “Someone who didn’t do the best they could for anyone they were assigned to would be unethical.” She glanced over Harry’s head and lowered her voice. “Do you think the vassal you freed from the bond is going to testify against you?”  
  
Harry wished there was a mirror on the wall ahead of him, so that he could look into it and see Blaise that way without having to turn his head and make it obvious that he was looking. “Why? Does he seem sulky?”  
  
“Sullen, rather,” Changes said. “But I wondered if he resented the release because it meant that he would have less protection than the rest and lose the prestige that comes with being your vassal.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “He wanted to be free. He kept insisting that it was enslavement and that I was wrong and horrible for not considering his will in the bargain. He tried to kill me more than once.”  
  
“So you have your own Freedom Fighter at your back.” Changes gave another glance at Blaise. Harry hoped that he wouldn’t pick up on it. “Be sure that you do not have a dagger poised at your back, instead.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I freed him once I had the power because it was what he wanted. None of the others have asked me yet.” He held back from turning to Severus. He still didn’t know what Severus had done to the bond from his own side, and it was useless asking in front of Changes. He would only grow all the more defensive. And it was still true that Severus hadn’t asked him. Until he did, Harry would keep him in the bond and fight for him.  
  
Changes glanced somberly at him. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’re more ethical than you need to be.”  
  
“Is that even possible?” Harry grimaced when his little joke didn’t change the expression on her face. “Listen. I did what seemed best at the time. I couldn’t anticipate everything. You just said that.”  
  
After a few seconds in which Harry thought Changes would argue with him, she smoothed out her lips and nodded. “Yes. You’re right. In the meantime, come on.” The doors of the courtroom were opening.  
  
Harry lined up behind Changes, and felt his other vassals fall into line behind him. Ron and Hermione had gone off wherever witnesses were supposed to assemble, and the Malfoys and Blaise were still with him, under Auror guard. Harry reckoned that was just because the Wizengamot hadn’t yet got around to ordering a different disposition for them.  
  
 _The moment of truth,_ he told himself as they walked back into the courtroom under the disapproving and bored and blank gazes of the Wizengamot.  _Or the beginning of the moment of truth, at least._  
  
*  
  
Draco tried to remember what he had heard about Wizengamot trials in the past, specifically the ones that his father had had in front of them, and if they had all involved the Wizengamot members looking this grim. He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. His mind was blank.  
  
Somehow, he had thought he would be calm until his own trial actually came. It hadn’t occurred to him that they would try Potter first, and that meant he might be doomed before he started. If they wouldn’t decide that Potter, who had saved so much of the wizarding world, was innocent, what would they say about the rest of them?  
  
Draco swallowed, and did his best to maintain his gaze straight ahead. Looking around and flinching would be the worst thing he could do right now. That might make someone think Potter was guilty, and Draco was worried about them finding out.  
  
Even though he  _was_ worried, he had to keep as calm as he could.  
  
He felt a small tingle from the shield mark on his arm. He didn’t move his hand to cover it, since that would probably look suspicious, too, but at least it was something, a cool sensation and far more soothing than he had expected, like the touch of water on feverish flesh. He swallowed around the lump in his throat and managed to sit down in the chair provided for him without wavering. At least they weren’t going to make them stand all through Potter’s trial.  
  
Potter himself was talking with Changes in a low voice that meant Draco couldn’t hear his words. Draco did his best not to fix a desperate gaze on him. That wouldn’t help with making the Wizengamot think they were innocent, either.  
  
 _Maybe nothing will._  
  
Again the bond tingled, and Draco settled back with his hands folded. If the best thing he could do right now—the  _only_ thing he could do to help Potter in his trial—was to remain still, then he would try to do that. He didn’t dart glances around. He didn’t stare at the back of Potter’s head as if it was only his hope of salvation.  
  
But sweet Merlin, it was hard not to.  
  
*  
  
 _Does the foolish child still think this will be easy?_  
  
As far as Severus could see, Potter was sitting there with an expression on his face that suggested he did think that. He watched the barrister as she rose to her feet and began to speak, but he betrayed no confusion or fear.   
  
Severus listened, but he could not feel those emotions through the bond, either. He could have hissed in irritation. The one time such information about the bloody boy’s state of mind, conveyed straight to his, would have been useful, and he couldn’t take advantage of it.  
  
But he had been the one who chose to blunt the bond. Because he could not keep tabs on Potter’s state of mind, he raised himself out of his lack and focused on what he  _did_ have, by listening to the barrister.  
  
From what little he knew of legal procedure, Changes spoke well. He had missed her introduction to the problem, but she was sharing the meat now, which was more interesting in any case, and prowling back and forth in short, controlled bursts, her eyes on the Wizengamot members. Severus watched in vague interest as she raised her hands.  
  
“…and Harry Potter is not an ordinary wizard. It would be folly to treat him as one, and not because he is a Lord.” Changes met pair of eyes after pair of eyes, although as far as Severus could tell, she didn’t look at Jenkyns, the wizard who had been so important to the previous farce of a trial. “You know that he defeated You-Know-Who. You know that he walked willingly into the Forbidden Forest and faced him. Later you will hear, if we are permitted to bring her in, from a witness who lied to save his life. He  _would_ have been dead without that. He risked death and worse to bring a Dark wizard down. And he intervened to defend victims who had never been friends of his, but were nevertheless innocent victims of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and found himself Lord of them for his trouble.” She glanced briefly back at Severus.  
  
Severus hoped that his eyes were sufficiently forbidding. He had no interest in serving as a test case or whatever she meant to make him. If she wanted him to testify about his dislike of Potter, then he would. If she wanted him to utter empty praise of his Lord, he would. Whatever would win Potter’s freedom, and, in time, his own.   
  
Changes turned back to the Wizengamot after a staring contest that Severus thought she had ended because she knew she would lose otherwise. “If you want justice to apply, however, you must treat him as an ordinary wizard in one way at least. Listen to the evidence of his guilt. Listen to the evidence that could excuse him. Listen to the witnesses. Consider, fairly, the words he will speak himself, to try and clear his name.” Severus saw her head twitch a little, as if she was going to spear a look at Jenkyns, but she refrained. “What he did for our world demands nothing less.”  
  
There was a murmuring undertone of voices then, but it died when Changes glanced in its direction. Changes nodded and turned to the center of the Wizengamot again. Ollondors was there, looking as if she wished her eyes could twinkle like Dumbledore’s.  
  
“Lord Potter has informed me that he allowed himself to be brought here on charges of using Unforgivables. He also, of course, is under the charge of deliberately forming a bond, rather than accidentally, and taking several unwilling captives vassal. Are there any other charges that we should be aware of?”  
  
Severus realized that he was holding his breath, and released it with a sharp huff of annoyance. He made sure the huff was silent. The annoyance was for himself, not for anyone else to notice. He would  _not_ let this moment seem dramatic to him, whether it concerned his fate or not. There was nothing that he could do to influence the course of events right now. Responding to them with more than calmness was weak.  
  
Potter leaned forwards in his seat. Severus could barely see the side of his face from here, and he had the impression that Potter’s sharp green eyes were scanning the seats in front of him. He grimaced. The more fool Potter, if he thought that being looked at from Lily’s eyes was likely to influence anyone to do anything. Severus was the only one in the world who might feel that influence, and Potter had lost his chance with him.  
  
“Honored Wizengamot?” Changes’s words rang now like blows from a hammer. “Would you let me know what you are thinking, and what charges will be pressed against Lord Potter?”  
  
Ollondors rose to her feet. “The charges you have mentioned,” she said, hands clasped to her chest in what looked like an attitude of prayer, the same one she had worn the last time the balance of power in the Wizengamot changed so dramatically. “And nothing else.” She sat down and beamed at everyone impartially.  
  
Severus did not close his eyes. But it was hard.  
  
*  
  
 _Good_.  
  
Harry smiled at Changes as she glanced back at him, and she gave him a subtle nod. That meant they were going ahead with the strategy they had prepared for this eventuality, and it meant that she was that much more confident of success.  
  
Changes picked up one of the sheaves of parchment from the small table beside her, and looked through it as if trying to absorb a lot of information at once. Harry knew that the precedents and rules were mostly in her head, and this was more or less a prop for her.  
  
“We will begin with the charges of the Unforgivables, then,” said Changes, in a voice so calm that one might think she was setting the whole tenor of the court. Well, maybe she was, Harry decided. The Wizengamot hadn’t given her much guidance so far. “Most recently, Lord Potter used the Cruciatus Curse against a Death Eater, Amycus Carrow. His stated reason for doing this was that Carrow had spat in Professor McGonagall’s face.” The Wizengamot made a number of small noises, and then was quiet again. Harry thought it might just be the noises from people who hadn’t heard the charge before. “Is there any witness the Wizengamot wishes to call who can confirm this?”  
  
She looked blandly around the courtroom. Things were quiet for long enough that Harry wondered what the Wizengamot was playing at. He couldn’t believe they would actually sacrifice the chance to have him tried and convicted of something.   
  
Finally, someone near the back of the room stood up. She was a woman Harry didn’t know, with a beak-like nose that reminded him of Severus’s and stringy blond hair. She bobbed her head at Harry as though she was going to peck him. “Is that a good enough reason to torture someone?” she asked, and sat down.  
  
Ollondors, who appeared to have taken Harry’s defense to heart, turned around and smiled at the woman. “I’m sure that your relatives tortured people for much less reason than that, Atropos. Are you really going to start asking us to think about motives and whether people got what they  _deserved_?”  
  
The woman flushed to the roots of her hair. Harry blinked. He supposed she was a Carrow relative. She just looked away, though, and Changes cleared her throat and repeated, “Can anyone who witnessed this act say anything about it?”  
  
Harry looked around. No one was going to take up the challenge, he supposed. Well, his friends wouldn’t want to in case they accidentally condemned him, and his vassals hadn’t been there. He stood up.  
  
Changes glanced back once at him. They had argued about this one. Harry had wanted to speak, she hadn’t wanted him to, and they had agreed to wait and see what other witnesses would come forward. But no one had, so Harry moved smoothly up to stand beside Changes, gazing at the Wizengamot and waiting for them to ask questions.  
  
“There wasn’t a good reason to torture him,” he said, into their continuing silence. “He spat into Professor McGonagall’s face, and I just reacted. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have done something that would stop him without torturing him.”  
  
He might have turned and gone back to his chair, but he knew that the Wizengamot would ask him more questions than that. So he stayed standing up obediently, and Changes shot him a quick, assessing glance and a little nod.   
  
“Then why should we be merciful to you?” Jenkyns was trying to regain control of the Wizengamot the way he’d had it earlier, Harry thought. He had his hand on his staff, but luckily he wasn’t waving it around. Harry would have jumped in between him and Pansy if he’d done that. “If you did it for no noble or heroic reason, just as an emotional reaction, why should we praise you?” He puffed out his chest and looked around as though he was waiting for applause.  
  
“I thought that the problem was using the Unforgivable Curses at all,” Harry said. “Not whether you used them for a good or noble reason.”  
  
Jenkyns half-jerked in his seat. “Of course it is,” he said, but he had been caught out, and looked all the more foolish for it.  
  
“I think that we should discuss this,” Ollondors said. She hadn’t risen to her feet again. She didn’t need to bother, Harry thought, looking at her. She could just sit there and radiate glee and it would be enough. Most of the Wizengamot would probably side with her instead of Jenkyns anyway. “Yes, we most certainly should. Are we here to condemn Harry Potter for his use of the Unforgivables and other crimes? Or are we here to condemn him for not using them for the  _right_ reason?” She paused delicately. “The reasons that some people in this room may have used them?”  
  
Wizengamot members looked sneaky and shifty and as if they wished they could melt into the walls. Harry nodded. “People used them because they were being threatened,” he said. “Right?”  
  
“Yes,” said Ollondors. “Most of us survived You-Know-Who’s regime. Most people suspected that the Minister was under Imperius. But  _we_ weren’t. We went ahead and used them. Are we going to deny that?”  
  
“But,” said the Carrow woman who had objected before, “we used them because we would be tortured if we didn’t. Mr. Potter wasn’t under threat of torture!” She stuck her arm out and pointed to him. “He’s already admitted that. So the reasons that applied to us don’t apply to him. And you can’t just punish the whole Ministry!”  
  
“If the Unforgivables are a crime always meriting punishment in Azkaban,” Changes murmured, right on cue, “then you can. Half the Ministry was punished in 1849 when someone cast the Imperius Curse on them and they began using the Killing Curse on magical beings in response. They weren’t executed because of the mitigating circumstances, but they were still sent to Azkaban.”  
  
“For how long?” asked Ollondors, as serious as a judge. Well, Harry supposed that she was, in this case.  
  
“For six months,” said Changes. “Perhaps the honored Wizengamot would consider a longer sentence now, since there are no longer Dementors at the prison.”  
  
Ollondors glanced up and down as though to say that she couldn’t speak for anyone else, but she definitely would. Harry held back his snort. He knew this was all a game. Ollondors had chosen to be on his side. She would want to win, but she wouldn’t want to send herself to Azkaban. It made Harry wonder if most of politics was a game.  
  
Maybe it was, but it was one that he had no desire to win. He would be happy if his trial could be over soon and he could know what his punishment was, so that he could retire to house arrest or pay a fine, or for that matter, go to prison. The Wizengamot could have a lot of things from him.  
  
 _But not my friends, and not my vassals._  
  
The Carrow woman in the back cleared her throat again. “I don’t see the point of pressing charges against the Ministry when we would have to arrest so many people, and the Aurors are already short-handed,” she said. “It sounds like the precedent Madam Changes is talking about was a rather closely-defined case. This would require months of work to find out who we should accuse.”  
  
 _And Merlin forbid that you take your time with the trials instead of holding them all at once,_ Harry thought. He didn’t  _want_ a long trial, but he knew there was an argument to be made that the Wizengamot should have waited until they could investigate things and figure out exactly what they were charging him with.  
  
He would make them take more care with his vassals. He had his own reputation to protect him, but his vassals didn’t have much, unless he acted like a real Lord and fought for them.  
  
“I expect that we will have to look into many circumstances,” Changes agreed. “But we also have to look into use of the Imperius Curse by Lord Potter.” She turned to him and stood there as if they had planned all this out and she knew exactly what he would say next.  
  
“I used it several times when we were breaking into Gringotts,” said Harry. He ignored the little murmur that made its way around the Wizengamot. Sure, he had to be political, but he wasn’t going to waste valuable brainpower figuring out whether that was a murmur of astonishment or excitement. “I used it on a Death Eater and on a goblin.”  
  
“You  _do_ seem to have a penchant for making Death Eaters victims of your Unforgivable Curses,” Jenkyns said.  
  
“Yes, I do,” Harry said. “Being hunted down by people who would turn you over to Voldemort if they caught you was a big incentive.”  
  
Jenkyns visibly tried to control his flinch at the name, and didn’t manage. But then he tightened his hands on the arms of his chair and leaned forwards, growling a little under his breath. “You admit that you have used them, and with intent, and for little reason?”  
  
“I just gave you the reasons,” Harry said. “You might disagree with them, but I think you have to agree that breaking into Gringotts is a whole different  _order_ of things than cursing someone because they spat in Professor McGonagall’s face.”  
  
Jenkyns shook his head. “The only question I have is whether we should also be charging you with theft. Why did you break into the bank?”  
  
Harry lowered his voice. He had already made up his mind what he would do if someone asked about Horcruxes, and the answer was to keep all knowledge of Horcruxes from the Wizengamot as much as he could. Of  _course_ he had to do that. The last thing he wanted to do was give more people ideas. “To steal a powerful weapon that Voldemort hid there.”  
  
“I didn’t think You-Know-Who trusted the goblins that much,” Ollondors said, breaking in as if she was just wanted her voice to be heard.  
  
Harry shook his head. “He hid it in Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault. That was why we had to curse the goblins and the Death Eaters to get that far. They never would have taken us willingly.”  
  
“None of that matters as to why you used the Imperius Curse,” Jenkyns said. Apparently not enough people had been paying attention to how cleverly he breathed his air, Harry diagnosed. “Using the Unforgivables is always wrong.”  
  
Harry nodded. “Then you’ll punish all of the people who used them in the Ministry, of course? Along with the people who used them at Hogwarts?” That would include Professor McGonagall, who had used the Imperius Curse on Amycus after Harry tortured him, but Harry wasn’t about to tell them that. They would find out soon enough.  
  
Jenkyns frowned harder. “The circumstances matter there.”  
  
“They matter or they don’t.” Harry let his voice harden. He didn’t know if he would have fought so hard for himself, when he had been the one to surrender to the Aurors in the first place, but he wasn’t about to let the Wizengamot get away with this massive hypocrisy. “You said that using them was always wrong. Why does that apply in my case but not in yours?”  
  
Jenkyns narrowed his eyes as if that would give him some answer. Ollondors took over then. “I don’t know if Azkaban would be a very  _effective_ punishment, without the Dementors,” she murmured, looking almost angelic. “Perhaps we should try house arrest of a different kind, Lord Potter?”  
  
Harry gave her a weary smile. “Yes. Or a fine. Whichever you think would be right and fair.”  
  
“It’s neither right nor fair!” Jenkyns said loudly. “He  _tortured_ people!”  
  
“And you tortured that Muggleborn witch who was supposedly in possession of a stolen wand because Yaxley ordered you to,” Ollondors snapped, turning to him. “I don’t see how you can  _seriously_  argue that this is worse.”  
  
Jenkyns stared at her before his eyes sank.  
  
Ollondors turned around to the Wizengamot. “Those in favor of a five hundred Galleon fine from Lord Potter and house arrest for a year?” she asked. “For him to go out accompanied by Aurors when he does leave the house, and those Aurors to be the ones who have already shown that they’ve done a fine job of handling him?”  
  
Harry held back his chuckle. He didn’t think Auror Stone would be thrilled about being assigned to him for that length of time, but, well, needs must. And he was watching hands rise all over the Wizengamot. It seemed that most people were in favor of the punishment Ollondors had proposed.  
  
Ollondors just nodded as if all of this was a wonderful idea, and hers personally, and turned back to Harry. “With that charge dealt with, perhaps we can move on to the formation of Lord Potter’s Lordship bond, and whether it was accidental or not.”


	44. Accidental or Not?

Draco licked his lips and sat up a little straighter. Then he wondered if that would give a signal to the people watching him that he was the most worried about this next part of the trial, and he shouldn’t show weakness like that to his and Potter’s enemies.  
  
Then he decided that he didn’t give a fuck.  
  
Watching Potter and Changes in the first part of the trial had been exhilarating, even though they hadn’t really been doing anything, just standing there and talking. Not that Draco didn’t know that talking could be something. The Dark Lord had made threats that went from idle to less idle over the course of an evening, and he had taunted his enemies just before he had his snake eat them. Draco knew that his father had made great changes in the political world just by speaking to certain people in the Ministry. So he knew. He wasn’t ignorant, not really.  
  
But there was something different about the words that Potter and Changes spoke. They were fighting for themselves, instead of fighting for power. Draco thought the distinction was kind of silly when he came up with it, and he could only imagine what his father would say.  
  
But he kept thinking about it.  
  
He thought even more about it as the Wizengamot started talking about the bond, and examples of them in the past. They had a few magical theorists and experts on bonds who seemed legitimate; at least, Potter didn’t object to them the way he had Kislik. He just listened and watched, and Draco couldn’t really tell what he was thinking, from his smooth, blank face.  
  
Draco shivered a bit. He didn’t like the thought that Potter, of all people, might have learned how to conceal his emotions.  
  
Potter turned his head then, and caught Draco’s eye, just as the shield mark on his arm shimmered blue and silver.  
  
Draco didn’t swallow his tongue, but it was a near thing. He blinked dumbly back at Potter, a little awed that he had taken the risk of turning around, and probably revealing to everyone in the room exactly what he was thinking about, whether or not he wanted to.  
  
Potter only shrugged at him and faced the front again. Draco became aware that his own face was relaxed, his own jaw no longer clenched as tightly.  
  
If Potter looked like that, then maybe he was confident they could win, after all. Or else that  _he_  could win, and his vassals would necessarily share in his fate.  
  
Draco wondered if it would be such a bad thing to remain bound to Potter for a little while after the trials were done.  
  
*  
  
Blaise could feel the dryness gathering on his tongue and lips. No one had yet looked at him, but they hadn’t called for witnesses yet, either. The Wizengamot had offered their own—dry—opinions and paraded their own—boring—experts across the floor instead. Even if he had a mind fully disengaged and ready to listen, Blaise wasn’t sure that he would have found anything worth listening to in their words.  
  
But then Ollondors, who seemed to be on Potter’s side, but who wasn’t a person of  _that_ great a consequence, asked, “Does anyone who saw the bond form want to testify?” and Blaise pumped his hand into the air as hard as he could. He probably looked like Granger.  
  
Several people gaped at him. Changes wasn’t one of them; she looked at Blaise with a narrow, considering gaze that made him glad he had survived his mother’s discipline. Changes might think she could frighten him, but she couldn’t. Blaise just sniffed at her and turned back to Ollondors.  
  
“One of Lord Potter’s vassals wishes to testify?” she asked, glancing back and forth between him and Potter as if for confirmation.  
  
“He’s not my vassal,” Potter said. “Not anymore. I manipulated the bond, after lots of concentration, so as to set him free.”  
  
“Why?” Ollondors scowled at Potter. Blaise ducked his head to hide a grin. She had probably wanted him to hide that information until they reached a place where she thought they would win, because now everyone would know that Potter was capable of freeing people and just wanted to hang onto them because he  _liked_ being a Lord and a slavemaster. It was like Potter was doing some of Blaise’s work for him.  
  
“I thought he would destroy himself if he remained under the bond,” Potter said simply. “And he wanted to be free.”  
  
Blaise frowned at him. Did Potter think he was getting  _sympathy_ points for that? The Wizengamot’s faces were blank and stiff, but Blaise thought he was sensitive to the atmosphere in the courtroom in a way that Potter wasn’t. No, he wasn’t going to get any points for that, not when he knew perfectly  _well_ that he could have released others, and was just holding back.  
  
“Are you going to testify for or against him?” Ollondors said finally, turning back to Blaise.  
  
“An inappropriate question to ask the young man, Madam,” said the white-haired wizard, Jenkyns, before Blaise could answer. “Why don’t we let him speak for himself, and see what he has to say?” He smiled at Blaise, and while the smile was as false as tarnished silver, Blaise still felt himself smile back. He knew how to handle people who wanted to use him. Potter had given him lots of practice. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yes, it is,” Blaise said, and walked forwards to the podium they had standing ready for witnesses.  
  
Changes got out of the way, giving him a glare that had nothing on his mother’s. Blaise walked past her only looking out of the corner of his eye, but in the end his curiosity got the better of him, and he turned his head so he could see Potter fully.  
  
Potter gazed at him steadily. There was no flicker of regret or fear or anger in his eyes. There was nothing at all.  
  
Blaise found his breath coming short before he thought about it, and he nearly rubbed his right arm, where the shield mark had been. Potter had no right to look like that after destroying Blaise’s  _life_ and making Blaise’s mother think he was weak.  
  
Well, he would show Potter. Potter might think that he was so haughty and so high and mighty, but Blaise would show  _him_.  
  
Blaise turned back and made sure to focus on Jenkyns, even though it was Ollondors who was asking him the questions. “Why did you want to be free of the bond?”  
  
“Because it was like slavery,” said Blaise, and made sure to widen his eyes and drop his head. That would make him look more innocent, his mother had told him. She had included that as part of his training even before he was Sorted into Slytherin, since she was certain he would be, and lots of people were prejudiced against Slytherins and wanted them to be guilty. “I didn’t have any will of my own.”  
  
“Can you describe the differences between it and an ordinary bond?” Ollondors sounded even stiffer.  
  
Blaise gave her a look of scorn. “I’ve never been under any other bond,” he said shortly. What did she think he was? Someone who went around kneeling to other people and begging them to take his freedom? “So no.”   
  
Ollondors opened her mouth to ask another question, and Jenkyns cut in. “How did the bond form, Mister—”  
  
“Zabini,” Blaise said, concealing his displeasure that they didn’t know who he was merely from the look of his face. It probably meant they hadn’t heard of his mother, and he knew she would hate that. “I was in the Great Hall, one of its victims. Of course I saw it form.”  
  
Jenkyns nodded, and Blaise knew he had someone who was as eager as he was to see Potter taken down. It didn’t matter if it was for the same reasons. For the first time since Potter had driven his mother out of Grimmauld Place, Blaise finally had an ally.  
  
“I saw it form,” Blaise whispered, and let his voice sink down into that rustling little mutter where people would  _have_ to listen. “And I saw the way it whirled up into the air and hung there, and I saw the way that Potter cast his spell. He waited until  _after_ the Dark Lord had launched the obedience curse. And have you considered that?” he added, staring innocently up at the Wizengamot. “That the bond was formed from an  _obedience_ curse? Even if other bonds don’t demand obedience of you or enslave your free will, this one could.”  
  
He could see mouths tightening and eyes widening all over the Wizengamot. Blaise smiled. They might think they were impenetrable and could fool him, but they were wrong.  _He_ had the upper hand.  
  
“That is, indeed, something to consider,” said Jenkyns gravely. “Please continue with your story.”  
  
“I felt the shield mark come into being on my arm, too,” Blaise said, and let himself bow his head and clutch his arm with one hand. “It hurt. I don’t think a normal bond mark should hurt that much. And this really  _isn’t_ a normal bond mark, you know. It’s a shield. It formed on all of us without asking, and Potter didn’t choose it.”  
  
“I thought the spell that Lord Potter raised against the Dark Lord’s curse was a Shield Charm,” said Ollondors.  
  
Blaise started and glanced at her. He hadn’t considered her once she had gone silent. But in the way her eyes fixed on him, he saw that he had been wrong to underestimate her. She was watching him, challenging him, and she didn’t intend to just let it go.  
  
“Of course it was,” Blaise said. “But he didn’t go around saying that was what he was going to create, and he didn’t ask us if it was what we  _wanted_ him to create, you know. He did nothing but make it. He didn’t ask any of us. This is a bond that commands obedience and it’s not one that we entered into willingly. He enslaved us. I ask you to see that.” He turned back to the Wizengamot and spread his hands appealingly.  
  
He didn’t know if it was going to work. They exchanged glances, and they were  _doubtful_ glances. Blaise held himself still, although inwardly he seethed. He didn’t know what he had said to inspire such lack of confidence. And they knew they couldn’t trust Potter, right? You couldn’t trust someone who defeated a Dark Lord and became a Lord himself in just a few minutes. It meant he had too much power.  
  
Blaise might not mean it the way the Wizengamot had meant it, but still he had thought he would have more allies here.  
  
“The problem is, Mr. Zabini,” Jenkyns said at last, and his voice dragged and rattled like a cart on stones, and made Blaise stiffen. “The problem is, what you describe sounds very much like an accidental bond.”  
  
Blaise shook his head. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t  _matter_ if it was! Potter meant to enslave us, and that makes it not accidental!”  
  
Jenkyns looked away, but Ollondors smiled at him. “Mr. Zabini, would you tell us why, in your opinion, Lord Potter wanted to enslave you, when he let  _you_ go?”  
  
“It was too hard for him to hold onto me,” Blaise said quickly. “Unlike some other people. And he didn’t want to deal with my mother, either.” His palms were sweaty. He wiped them on the sides of the podium. “I made it clear that it was slavery, and that I resented it. So he let me go.”  
  
Ollondors gave him the sweetest smile of all and looked around the Wizengamot as though she wanted to make sure she was the center of attention. “No further questions.”  
  
Blaise looked away from her to the rest of the members of the Wizengamot. There had to be someone here who wanted to hear what he had to say.  
  
But most of the people in sight avoided his eyes. Some coughed and did it, and some winced and did it. The vast majority simply looked straight ahead with a blank gaze that he was no longer included in.  
  
Blaise swallowed. His voice was stuck in his throat, the voice he could have used to fight what Ollondors was saying.  
  
“It wasn’t accidental,” he said loudly. “It couldn’t have been.”   
  
The Wizengamot members who were still allowing that he existed exchanged glances. Ollondors gave him a radiant smile of pity that Blaise couldn’t look at. He turned and faced Jenkyns again, with a silent demand.  
  
Jenkyns grimaced and met his eyes. “It sounds accidental,” he muttered. Maybe he wouldn’t dare do anything else with the way that Ollondors stared at him, Blaise thought, slowly beginning to be murderous. “He used a Shield Charm, and he didn’t consciously choose the shape of the mark that appeared on your arm. He took time to release you, which suggests that he took time to understand the bond enough to do so.”  
  
“Why can’t you understand that it was  _slavery_?” Blaise snapped. “That it was rape of the will, if not the body?”  
  
“Because it doesn’t sound like that,” said Ollondors, and Blaise didn’t look at her, but it apparently didn’t matter, not when her  _voice_ was so full of pity, too. “Not when he let you go.”  
  
“He held me under his subjection before then.” Blaise hated how breathless his voice sounded, but this was true, and he didn’t know how to speak in a way that would make it not true, the way they apparently wanted him to speak. “He spent several days cooping me up in a house where I didn’t want to be, and he twice attacked me with magic! Don’t you  _care_ about that?” He twisted around when he caught a movement from the corner of his eye, and saw Jenkyns sitting up.  
  
“He attacked you?” Jenkyns had an almost hungry tone in his voice.  
  
At the moment, Blaise couldn’t have cared less that the tone wasn’t for him, it was for the possibility of putting Potter in prison. Yes, let them hate and curse Potter and want to get at him through Blaise, as long as they  _got_ at him.  
  
“Yes, he did,” said Blaise, glancing back and forth between the members of the Wizengamot, who looked a little more interested now. “He burned me so badly once that it was a miracle that I survived. And another time, it was more generalized magical pain that I had to spend time in the Hogwarts hospital wing recovering from.”  
  
Changes moved in a way that drew Blaise’s eye, reluctant though he was to give her any of his precious attention. “The bond would have punished him if he did,” she murmured. “It would have punished any Lord who acted so irresponsibly, no matter how much he had disliked his vassals before the bond began. What did you do?”  
  
Blaise went rigid with rage, and he knew it. He stared at her, wondering if magic would answer his wish and strike her down. He didn’t have his wand right now, so it would have to be magic of the will, the kind that was wrongly called accidental magic.  
  
So much in life wasn’t accidental, even though so many people thought it was. His mother was the one who had taught him that, along with why children couldn’t just fling magic they thought was “accidental” around and not expect to be punished for it.   
  
“I attacked him,” he said. “But I didn’t deserve—”  
  
“Did you try to kill him?”  
  
“I wanted the person who had enslaved me  _dead_ ,” Blaise snapped. “Not an impulse that you can understand, I’m sure, given that you’ve never been under the slavery of a Lordship bond yourself.”  
  
“I only wanted to know the answer,” Changes murmured, and turned back to the Wizengamot. “I think that we’ve found proof as to why the bond was accidental, sirs, madams. Of course Lord Potter wouldn’t take someone under his vassalage who would try to kill him. Or if he didn’t realize, he would have released Mr. Zabini at once, instead of waiting until he could master the bond more particularly.”  
  
Blaise thought he said something, but possibly the thump of blood in his head only made him think he had. Either way, he watched as the Wizengamot turned against him, murmuring and nodding, and the vote was held.  
  
“Lord” Potter’s bond was judged accidental. He hadn’t meant to take any of them “under his wing,” as Ollondors put it. He hadn’t meant to harm them.  
  
 _Of course, because the bond is accidental, they’re going to judge all the results of it as accidental as well,_ Blaise thought. It was so hard to breathe.  _All the things he did to me. All the ways he twisted my mind. All the ways that he drove my mother away._  
  
“Mr. Zabini?”  
  
Blaise pulled himself back from the blackening spiral of thoughts that was threatening to devour him, and looked up at Ollondors. She was frowning slightly at him, as though she had spoken his name more than once and he hadn’t responded. Blaise didn’t give a fuck. She had decided against him, she and all the rest of the Wizengamot, and he knew that made them his enemies. Of  _course_ Potter’s popularity wasn’t good for anything, he thought. Good enough to win him an acquittal he never should have won, but not for anything else.  
  
“You may sit down now.”  
  
Blaise turned and plodded back to his chair. He felt as if his feet were carrying his heart along with them, and that he was scraping the floor with it. His breathing was soft and heavy, too, and when he collapsed back into his chair, he might have been one of those Wizengamot members, staring so blankly ahead of him.  
  
He didn’t know what to do now.  
  
*  
  
Severus swallowed back both curse and praise. He could have told the idiot Potter that Zabini was like a sword rattling around in a loose sheath, and should be put away somewhere before he cut someone.  
  
But the crisis had passed, and if it was due to the good efforts of their barrister and Ollondors instead of Potter himself, well, Severus did not much care to owe his deliverance to Potter, anyway. He could put up with this well enough.  
  
“Is there any other witness that you wish to speak to?” Changes had moved a little away from Potter, as if she wanted to show that even Lords who already had Shields needed more of them, and folded her hands into her sleeves. She looked cool and calm. No one would ever have believed that she had thought it possible they would lose the case.  
  
Severus sneered under his breath. He could have given her some advice that would at least have kept Zabini at bay and made the issue of the case come out that much sooner. But no one had thought to speak to him, and Severus was not one to put himself forward, not when he had done so much already to escape the bond.  
  
“We wish to speak to everyone who saw the bond form,” said the Carrow woman. Severus looked at her for a moment, and then turned away. She knew she had lost already, and was only fighting to keep others from realizing it. He need expend no energy on struggling against her.  
  
“Then you would have to interview all the vassals, and many of the students and their parents who were in the Hogwarts Great Hall,” said Changes, in a dry voice that Severus would have been better able to bear if she had only asked his advice. “There were dozens of witnesses, and they saw it from all sorts of angles. They would give you tales like the ones you wish for, but it would take months to get through them all.”  
  
Carrow peered down at Changes like a vulture about to swoop. “I suppose you think that you know what we  _want_ to hear?”  
  
“I know that some people wish to condemn Lord Potter for forming an accidental bond.” Changes gave her a faint, acid smile. “We just heard from one of them. But I believe that his friends wish to testify—and one of them, Hermione Granger, insists on Veritaserum.”  
  
Severus sighed. Of course she did.  
  
Changes’s tactic had the desired effect, and the Wizengamot who still opposed Potter fell over themselves asking to hear Granger. She came into the courtroom, gave the Wizengamot a look of general contempt, and then sat down in the chair offered to her and took the three drops of Veritaserum with ceremonious efficiency.  
  
Severus knew he would be able to let his mind drift during the testimony, and that was exactly what happened. Granger testified the way everyone sane wanted her to, with perfect fidelity and boring truth. She didn’t develop the expression of impatience that Severus knew she would have worn without the potion, but that was all to the good. Now, no one could accuse her of mocking the Wizengamot.  
  
Weasley came in after her, and although he refused the Veritaserum, he told the same truth. The Wizengamot had no choice but to admit that the bond was accidental.  
  
Severus rolled his eyes. He no longer cared who saw him. What other conclusion did they think they could come to? Surely it must have been obvious to those with some experience in Lordship bonds, as opposed to those with some experience in stupid politics, that the bond was accidental.  
  
And if they had charged Harry Potter, what would have happened? Some people would have gone along for the sake of the scandal and the interest it excited, but more would have been displeased, and an unhappy populace was a recipe for disaster at the moment, with how unstable the wizarding world was.  
  
Then Severus realized what he was thinking and stopped, appalled at himself.  
  
What did  _he_ care about the long-term consequences of Potter’s behavior, and whether they arrested him or not? He was thinking as though he was Potter’s real Shield, as though he would remain in this bond for one moment longer than he had to, as though his fate was tied to Potter’s beyond the trial.  
  
This was another sign of how the bond was corrupting his mind, and creeping through even the careful shields he had established to make sure such a thing could not happen.  
  
So while the Wizengamot held their debate on Potter’s innocence of this charge that was not a debate at all, Severus stared off into the distance and rebuilt his Occlumency shields. He did not let himself stiffen when the Wizengamot rose to their feet and Ollondors announced their decision.  
  
“On the charge of knowingly forming a bond and taking unwilling vassals into captivity, we find Lord Harry Potter innocent.”  
  
There was a sound from Mr. Zabini before he could stop himself. Severus grimaced. He foresaw another responsibility that would come his way that night, because of course no one else would think of stepping into his place and comforting Mr. Zabini.  
  
He stopped thinking like that when he realized that Ollondors had turned to him.  
  
“And tomorrow,” she said, “will be the trial of Severus Snape.”


	45. Severus Snape

"Severus? I wanted to talk to you."  
  
Severus stiffened his shoulders and refused to look around. He had gone to his room when they arrived back at Grimmauld Place, and everyone else had been wise enough not to disturb him. It made sense that it was Potter, the idiot, who would be the exception to the rule.  
  
"Listen. Do you want to revise the plan that Changes and I came up with of how you should face them, or not?"  
  
That made enough sense that Severus turned reluctantly around. Potter stood in the doorway behind him, eyes so dark that Severus would have looked away and blushed in some other times.  
  
 _In some other life, when I was friendly with Lily's son, when I cared what he thought of me._  
  
Potter's opinion had still mattered more to Severus than it should, often, but he had had to put that aside. Saving Potter's life, and the world, had mattered more than whether an eleven-year-old, or a thirteen-year-old, or a sixteen-year-old, hated him. Severus nodded to Potter, and he walked over and sat on a chair in the middle of the room. He didn't look any happier to be there than Severus was to see him there.  
  
 _Good. At least that means that he is not likely to stay long._  
  
Severus clasped his hands and waited for this famous plan. He was unprepared for Potter to deliver it in a monotone, his eyes fixed over Severus's shoulder on the far wall.  
  
"We checked with Professor McGonagall, and she's agreed to serve as a character witness, to explain how you turned aside Death Eaters from torturing the students without making it obvious that's what you were doing. And although it hasn't been done often, you can use a portrait as a witness, too. So we'll bring in Professor Dumbledore's portrait, and he can speak about the plans that he and you made to plant you as a spy in the inner circle of the Death Eaters."  
  
Severus found it hard to breathe. He told himself that these plans must have come from the barrister, that Potter wasn't smart enough to have come up with them on his own. And he had probably had a push from Minerva about bringing in Albus's portrait, too. There was no way that he would have envisioned all this.  
  
There was no way that he would have put this much _effort_ into defending someone who he knew had tampered with the bond, someone he had always hated.  
  
"You believe that I was innocent of Albus's murder as it was set up, then?" Those were _not_ the right words to have emerged from Severus's mouth, and he shut his lips hard upon them. But Potter did nothing save give him a faint, bewildered frown, which seemed to say that he implored Severus to talk sense.  
  
"I didn't believe you were innocent most of the last year," Potter said. "But the way you explained it, nothing else makes sense."  
  
Severus made a bow, as elegant and sarcastic as he could from his seated position. "Then I am grateful to have been granted such a _privileged_ position in your mind."  
  
"You're an arse," Potter said conversationally. "You've always been an arse. But I think that most of what you did in the last year was devoted to maintaining your cover, and that's a duty I can respect even though I wish that most of the outcome could have been different. Yes, I'm going to give you your due." He stood up and moved towards the door. "That's all we came up with," he added over his shoulder. "Except that we're going to have Narcissa Malfoy testify about the Unbreakable Vow that she put you under, and you might want to take Veritaserum to guarantee that they believe you."  
  
Severus found it hard to breathe. He did manage to make his lips and tongue move before Potter could walk out the door, though. "Wait!"  
  
Potter turned around. He seemed faintly impatient now.   
  
"You didn't need to put this much effort into defending me," Severus said. "I simply want to know how much of your effort comes from the bond."  
  
"How the fuck should I know?" Potter asked, voice so soft that it was hard to realize what he had said at first, and with what vehemence. "I don't know how much it's messed with my head, because I don't know what I would have felt like if it had never come into being. I probably would have testified at your trial, still, if you survived, but I don't know how much my testimony would have been worth when I didn't believe what you were doing. This way, I believe you, and I'm free now to behave like a Lord and protect you a little. And I'll release you as soon as the trial is done. Be grateful."  
  
He turned away again, but those last words had brought Severus up on his feet. He didn't know if he would ever have the chance to say this again, and that made it imperative to get the words out as soon as he could. " _Grateful?_ Grateful to someone who enslaved me, who meant that I was going to have another master as soon--"  
  
Potter turned around one more time. There was no light in his eyes, and that made Severus check as nothing else could have done. Well, maybe the bond, before he had severed the control Potter had over him.   
  
"You would have had another master either way," Potter said. "Given the curse that Voldemort cast on you." He seemed not to notice Severus's flinch, any more than he took pleasure in it. "The bond prevented you from going back to him. And I wouldn't talk to the Wizengamot about enslavement. Blaise already tried that tactic, and no one believed it."  
  
Severus gritted his teeth. He had forgotten to go and comfort Mr. Zabini when they returned to Grimmauld Place, but he had been too overwhelmed by the news of his own trial and the drowning, whirling sensation in his head. He struck back as hard as he could. "Of course no one would believe my word over the word of _Harry Potter_."  
  
Potter rolled his eyes. "Is that all you're worried about? There was a point where you could have protested, and someone would have listened to you, and that situation was right _here_. They were desperate for material against me. You could have turned traitor to me, if your own life mattered more to you than anything else." He watched Severus for a second. "But you couldn't."  
  
"Thanks to the bond." Severus heard his own voice from a distance. He felt as if he must vomit, but could not.  
  
"How much of that is the bond, and how much your years of dedication to protecting me?" Potter shook his head, calm, and infuriating with it. "I told you, I don't know how much of it is the bond, but I refuse to spend the rest of my life worrying about it. And if you cooperate with me, then you won't have to do that, either, because I'll release you as soon as the trial is done."  
  
"I do not wish to _cooperate_ with you."  
  
Potter stood a little taller. "So I should firecall Changes--they'll let me do that now--and tell her that all the arrangements we made for your defense should be canceled? She'll be delighted to be relieved of some of the extra work. She especially wasn't looking forward to dealing with the objections to Dumbledore's portrait."  
  
"You stupid child," Severus whispered. He did not know what was happening. He ought to be expert at manipulating people with just a few words, but this situation kept twisting out of control, away from the safe, predictable road that his experience had laid down. "You want me to be grateful for this. You are trying to force gratitude from me, when you ought to know that there is nothing more _useless_."  
  
"You have a lot of strange ideas." Potter's eyes were calm and didn't move from his face. His voice was as heavy as a sheet of steel. "I don't want you to proclaim your gratitude to me. I want to know that you're not going to turn on me for stupid reasons, the way Blaise did, and work against your own interests in the name of some misguided pride."  
  
"Mr. Zabini did what was necessary for him!"  
  
A hint of Potter's sneer showed then. Severus wondered who had taught him that. "Oh? Then you approve of the way he conducted his defense?"  
  
Severus looked away. Of course he could not. It had been a risk, and risks were acceptable if they paid off, but this one had not, and the odds had been against it. All Mr. Zabini had done was expose the depth of his own obsession with getting Potter to pay for what he had done, and that was not an emotion Severus would have wanted anyone to see, even if he did share part of it himself.  
  
"I didn't think so," Potter said. "No, all I ask is that you go along with this willingly--"  
  
"Not grudgingly?" The words popped out of Severus's mouth the same way that the nauseated sensation had popped up at the back of his stomach.  
  
"If you go along with it grudgingly, then I know that means you won't speak as well as you could," Potter said. "In the end, the only person you're hurting would be yourself. Because I know that you would hate to go to Azkaban or stay under the bond far more than I would hate it."  
  
Severus turned back to snap, but Potter had already left. His last words did come up the stairs, through the open door. "I have better things to do than stay here."  
  
Those words should not have gouged a wound in Severus's soul. He should not have sat down and buried his face in his hands.  
  
But they did, and he did.  
  
*  
  
Greg looked curiously at his Lord as he came back into the kitchen. He had only gone upstairs to speak with Professor Snape, Greg thought, which wasn't something that should have made him run around and sweat. But he was sweating now, and he sat down at the table and had a red face and clenched fists.  
  
"What's wrong, my Lord?" There were a few other people in the kitchen, like his Lord's friends, but they were all talking. Greg didn't think anyone heard what he whispered to his Lord.  
  
Lord Potter started, then looked at Greg over his shoulder. "I just hate Snape," he said.  
  
Greg considered that. He respected Professor Snape, but that was because he was a Slytherin, and Professor Snape had always done good things for Slytherins. Greg had thought that Professor Snape was being fine to his Lord at the house, because it wasn't a Potions classroom. But he could have been wrong. "Do you want me to beat him up?"  
  
Lord Potter started again, then shook his head. "No. Just leave him alone."  
  
Greg nodded, accepting that. "Then what can I do to make you feel better? You look upset," he added, when Lord Potter gave him a strange, questioning look. Maybe he wondered how Greg knew that he was upset.  
  
"I don't think anything can really make this better." Lord Potter waved a weary hand, and the little house-elf popped up in front of him and handed him a cup of tea. Greg wished he had thought of that. From the way his Lord sipped from it, it was indeed making him feel better. "He hates the bond, and me. I hate him. It just has to go away on its own."  
  
"If they try him and get him to go free, then you can let him go from the bond? Right?" Greg wasn't sure how that worked. He knew that Lord Potter had let Blaise go, but since Greg didn't understand why someone would _want_ to be free from the bond, he could be getting a lot of things wrong.  
  
"Right." Lord Potter gave him a tired smile. "But he has to cooperate in the trial to get free of the bond. I don't know if he will."  
  
"That's stupid," Greg said, after thinking it over. "He shouldn't do things that are stupid just because he wants to spite you. That's stupid," he repeated, seeing his Lord staring at him. Draco sometimes did things to spite other people, but they just got him in trouble. And sometimes Greg and Vince, too, but Greg knew _they_ were doing it to help Draco, so he didn't mind so much.  
  
Lord Potter laughed suddenly and lifted his teacup, which attracted some other people's attention. But Greg didn't mind, because for right now, his Lord was focused solely on _him_.  
  
"You're right," Lord Potter said. "I should keep that in mind. There are only so many things I can do. If Snape doesn't cooperate, then he's the stupid one. I just have to be the best Lord I can, even if some of my vassals decide to act in a stupid or self-destructive manner. Or ex-vassals," he said in a low voice, staring at the far wall in a way that Greg knew meant he was thinking about Blaise.  
  
"That's right," Greg said. "You're already the best Lord, though." He thought Lord Potter should know that. He doubted himself sometimes. Not for the same reasons that Draco had, which usually included his father and wondering if his father would think he was right, but for reasons that mattered to Lord Potter, no matter how silly Greg thought they were.  
  
Lord Potter's smile grew deeper, warmer. "Thanks, Greg." He turned back to his conversation with other people then, who were trying to talk across the table to him.  
  
But Greg didn't mind. He had done something that eased his Lord's mind after all, even if that was just repeating a few obvious truths. They _had_ to be obvious if Greg could see them, but it seemed that his Lord couldn't always see them because his eyes were different.  
  
Maybe his main jobs for the rest of his life would be to stand at his Lord's shoulder and tell him the truth sometimes, Greg thought, settling back into a glow of contentment. And sometimes guard him from danger, and sometimes get toasted with tea.  
  
That sounded like a pretty nice life.  
  
*  
  
"Do you have something to say to us, Mr. Snape?"  
  
Pansy shifted a little in her chair, uneasily. It felt wrong to hear someone speak to Professor Snape without his title. Of course, the woman in the Wizengamot's lead seat was probably too old to have been one of his students, and maybe she didn't like him because she felt like he was dragging his Lord down, but still. He was owed some respect.  
  
Professor Snape didn't seem to care either way, though. He sat still in his own chair and studied the Wizengamot in front of him without much moving. Then he nodded and stood up. At once the barrister, Changes, moved forwards to stand beside him.  
  
Pansy didn't think he looked at her once. If Changes meant to be some kind of support to him, she should have chosen her victim to support better.  
  
"This is the true story of what happened two years ago, when Albus Dumbledore was still alive," said Professor Snape expressionlessly, and began to speak.  
  
Pansy listened in breathless silence as he talked about Mrs. Malfoy coming to him and placing him under an Unbreakable Vow, then about Professor Dumbledore invoking the same kind of Vow. Pansy hadn't ever known that he hadn't had a _choice_ about whether to protect Draco. She had thought Professor Snape was just doing that because he was Head of Slytherin and Draco was one of his students.  
  
But from seeing the bitter lines of pain carved into the professor's face as he spoke, Pansy had to wonder if he would have chosen to defend Draco at all, if he had known everything that would happen to him because of it.  
  
 _He picked the way that would allow him to survive. He did what he had to do._  
  
After a moment of thinking about it, Pansy nodded slowly. That didn't actually mean that Professor Snape had never cared for any of his Slytherins. It _did_ mean that she had to think about her decisions in the future if they were based on loyalty towards her House. That loyalty might still exist, but not everyone felt it in equal measure.  
  
So it was still a valuable lesson. Pansy smiled at Professor Snape's back, feeling benevolent towards him. She didn't know if anyone else in the courtroom did right now, but she could hope so.  
  
Professor Snape finished reciting and sat down. The courtroom seemed stunned for a few moments. Maybe they thought he was lying, Pansy decided, glancing from face to face and the wide and staring eyes. But if so, they hadn't expected his lie to be so convincing, or so detailed, or supported by events.  
  
The woman in the lead Wizengamot seat, Ollondors, stirred after a minute. "A remarkable tale, Mr. Snape," she said quietly, and there was respect in her voice now that _made_ the "Mr." sound like a higher title. "I don't suppose that you have any proof that does not come only from your own mouth?"  
  
"He does."  
  
The voice made Pansy's head swivel. She had noticed that they'd brought a portrait in earlier, but she hadn't paid that much attention. It could have been someone who had died by Professor Snape's wand in the war and was going to testify against him, after all.  
  
But no, it was Headmaster Dumbledore, popping a painted sweet into his mouth and beaming out at everyone. Pansy knew she wasn't the only one who looked at Professor Snape in that moment, but she _did_ wonder if she was the only one who saw the way his fists clenched and the shape of his jaw changed.  
  
"Yes, it was just as Severus has said," said Dumbledore, and nodded at Professor Snape again before he turned back to the Wizengamot. He was still smiling, Pansy thought. She knew that portraits weren't the real people they pictured, and you couldn't expect them to be, but she thought that this version of Headmaster Dumbledore probably enjoyed messing with people just as much. "I did put him under an obligation to me, and that meant he had no choice but to kill me." He half-frowned, and shook his head a little. "I was already dying at the time, from poison left in a trap by Voldemort."  
  
Pansy clutched the edges of her chair; other people swayed as if blown by a strong wind. Other people in the Wizengamot muttered and shifted, but no one said much. Dumbledore smiled as if he enjoyed the reaction to the name anyway, and continued. "He had earlier been made to Vow that he would complete young Mr. Malfoy's task if young Mr. Malfoy was unable to. And Mr. Malfoy _did_ find himself unable to kill me." This time, it was Draco he turned to smile kindly at. "Which speaks well to the state of his soul. But it left poor Severus under multiple Vows that obliged him to kill me."  
  
"But why would you oblige him to kill you in the first place?" That was Jenkyns, who hadn't given up yet, Pansy thought, wearily. She wondered why. Did he just want to clutch at any last shreds of political power that might come his way, or did he really think that he would find a hole in their stories somewhere? "That's a strange thing to do."  
  
Dumbledore replied in the kind of cool voice Pansy had only heard from him occasionally, usually when he wanted to make a serious point at the Leaving Feast. "Because Severus had been acting as my spy among the Death Eaters for years. The return of Voldemort was another obligation, making him take up that burden again. In the meantime, I knew that my murder would place his loyalty beyond all doubt, and make it possible for him to carry out other necessary tasks."  
  
"What _were_ those tasks?" Jenkyns sounded as if he knew that he wouldn't get any answer that would help him, but also as if he didn't know how to give up.  
  
"To make sure that he could protect some of the students of Hogwarts, for one thing," said a voice from the side. Pansy turned her head and saw Professor McGonagall rising from a seat that must have been brought in while everyone was busy listening to the portrait. From the way she smiled at the Wizengamot, McGonagall was enjoying herself. "We knew that he was likely to be appointed in some way to Hogwarts--either to recruit Slytherin students, or to become Headmaster or Potions professor again. He did what he could to influence the other Death Eaters into what he called 'psychological punishments' instead of physical torture. And he took charge of a number of detentions himself." McGonagall's gaze swept the room and halted on Pansy and Draco. "I ask you to speak to the Slytherin students who suffered through that terrible year and are here in this courtroom, whether those detentions were particularly arduous."  
  
"I just don't see what kind of outcome could have justified murder and all the rest of it." Jenkyns sounded weak, but he was still fighting on the way down.   
  
"The defeat of You-Know-Who, of course." McGonagall gave him a hard look. "That's a cause that Mr. Potter, along with other people, already sacrificed quite a bit in pursuit of, didn't they?"  
  
Maybe Jenkyns was afraid that someone would ask him what _he_ had sacrificed for the war, because he hunched his shoulders and scowled at the floor instead of responding. Pansy hid a smile. She hoped that was the last they would hear of his voice.  
  
It wasn't the last they heard of McGonagall's voice. She was speaking on, enumerating various crimes and ways that Professor Snape had mitigated them. Pansy thought she could lean back and enjoy the show.  
  
And so she could. For a while.  
  
*  
  
Harry sighed. He was sweating, and his legs were struggling to bear him up, and his throat was hoarse. But he still had a little more speaking to do in defense of Severus before the trial could close.  
  
"And you're sure that you would be willing to take charge of him if we released him into your care under house arrest?" That was Ollondors, all but propping her chin up on a fist as she watched him. She knew they were winning, Harry thought, but she had to maintain the pretense that they were struggling hard until the end.  
  
Harry nodded. "The same way I would be willing to do with any of my other vassals," he added. He didn't know if they were going to consider the same fate--house arrest--for Draco and Greg, the other Marked Death Eaters, but he was at least going to push for it. "Professor Snape did say that he wanted to be free of the bond after the trial, and I can do that for him, but--"  
  
He stopped, because a woman with smooth brown hair sitting next to Ollondors was shaking her head. Harry wondered for a moment if this was someone who was going to object that he couldn't really care what happened to Severus if he wasn't a vassal anymore, and bristled. For this, he would stand up and talk for _hours_ more.  
  
But instead, the woman murmured, "The Wizengamot asked me here to estimate the depth of the bond, and to make sure, one more time, that it was a true Lordship bond." She didn't look at Jenkyns, but Harry did, and glared. He _knew_ whose fault this was. Jenkyns cowered a little, but that didn't strip his sickly smile from him. "It is indeed a true bond. And it would make sense for a Lord to shelter and protect his vassals."  
  
"Well, then." Harry folded his arms and stared at her, trying to understand where her objection came in. "I said that."  
  
"A true bond," said the woman. "With everyone except him." She pointed with one of her little fingers at Severus. "He has done something to it that makes the bond weak from his side. Legally, he cannot claim to be under your protection, as your vassal, at all. Legally, the bond is required to be strong from both sides."  
  
In the silence, immediately followed by uproar, that started then, all Harry could really hear was his own pounding heart, and all he could think was, _Snape, you idiot._


	46. Power Differentials

Pansy wanted so badly to open her mouth and go to the front of the room. Or, well, she could speak from her chair. But she wanted to tell Potter to claim Professor Snape as his vassal, no matter what happened, and she wanted to dispute the conclusions that the magical theorist had evidently made, and she wanted to tell Professor Snape to stop being stupid and accept the offered protection. It was the advice that he would have offered any of his Slytherins. She didn’t understand why he was being so difficult.  
  
But she couldn’t move. She didn’t understand exactly what Professor Snape had done to the bond, or how the magical theory expert could tell. And she didn’t know if the move she thought Potter should try would actually work.  
  
As she hesitated, Potter turned to face the woman who had spoken. “How do you know that the bond is weak on his side?” he asked.  
  
The woman glanced at him. Pansy didn’t see the mildest sign of passion on her face. She looked as if she would be perfectly happy to agree with anything Potter said, except for the slight tilt of her head.  
  
“I can feel it,” she said. “The Wizengamot should have brought me in earlier, but there were some complications with my own family. I was unable to leave my daughter to come here until today.”  
  
“That doesn’t actually answer my question,” said Potter evenly.  
  
The woman blinked, then held her hands up. “My name is Anna Kilman,” she said. “I have no reason to believe that the Wizengamot invited me to witness this trial for the wrong reasons. I have only the conviction that any bond can be seen and observed, if someone is looking for the evidence. In your case, it comes from the brightness of your shield mark. When I concentrate on it and cast the proper spells, I can see the faint rays of radiance that link you to your vassals. The rays are bright on the arms of three of them. There are faint shadows that linked you to the young man who spoke yesterday, the one who  _had_ been your vassal. And the light is not as strong when coming from this man.”  
  
Potter stiffened and cast a glance at Professor Snape that Pansy could read well enough. He was blaming Professor Snape for this, at least partially. Maybe Potter had already suspected that Professor Snape had done something to the bond. Maybe it was something he could feel from his side.  
  
Well, Pansy couldn’t just sit there and let the trial go to hell without saying something, even if it was something that wouldn’t help all that much. She stood up.  
  
Kilman turned to her. “You are a faithful vassal,” she said. “I see nothing wrong with the light that ties  _you_ to your Lord.”  
  
 _As though I cared for your opinion_. Pansy caught herself before her tongue could betray her, and bowed her head a little. “I know,” she said. “But I have something important to say. Can I come forwards?”  
  
She managed to turn on those last words, so that she was appealing more to Jenkyns and Ollondors than to this woman. Kilman might be a magical theory expert, but she had nothing to say about whether or not Pansy could participate in this part of the trial. The masters of the Wizengamot were the ones that Pansy had to impress.  
  
“You may come forwards.” Jenkyns sounded haughty, as if he were actually in control here. Maybe he thought he could be, Pansy decided, hurrying up beside Potter with her heart thrumming like a handful of excited bees. He was the one who had ordered Kilman to come, and it must please him to see Professor Snape’s trial in danger of condemning him to Azkaban.  
  
And Professor Snape just stood there with this constipated expression on his face. In a way, Pansy could understand Potter’s exasperation with him, now that she thought about it.  
  
“Thank you,” said Pansy, to Jenkyns and Ollondors and maybe Kilman if she wanted to think that was directed at her, and turned to face more of the Wizengamot who were peering down and looking undecided. “It’s true that Professor Severus Snape has weakened the bond somehow. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a faithful vassal.”  
  
Potter gave her a long, slow look. Pansy looked him back, dead in the eye, and silently hoped that he remembered that she knew more than he did about Lordship bonds and the complications that made them work or not work.  
  
Potter looked away from her, a seemingly bored expression on his face, even as the shield mark on her arm sparked. Kilman narrowed her eyes, but didn’t say anything. Pansy took both of those as permission to go on.  
  
“Lord Potter hasn’t seen fit to cut him out of the bond, the way he did with Blaise Zabini,” said Pansy. She would have to walk a delicate line here. On the one hand, Potter portraying Blaise as leaving of his own free will was important, because it meant that he wasn’t an evil enslaver like Kislik had wanted to say he was. On the other hand, Pansy had to make being in the bond seem like a privilege. “He hasn’t complained about him. He knew something was wrong, different, about Professor Snape’s part in the bond before this, but he didn’t complain.”  
  
Potter jerked a little. Pansy kept from nodding in satisfaction, but only just.  _I was right about him noticing something was wrong in the bond on Professor Snape’s end, then._  
  
“What was wrong?” Kilman sat up straight. “You must study for years and years, and practice the spells, to get as good as I have. What do you mean, he sensed something wrong about the bond?” She sounded indignant, but not in the way Jenkyns did, Pansy thought, and began breathing again. She had been right to take this risk. Kilman just sounded like someone whose professional pride was wounded.  
  
“I am the Lord of this bond,” said Potter, and his voice was cool and just a shade haughty, the way it should be. “A bond that you just finished pronouncing a true one. Why  _wouldn’t_  I notice something wrong about a vassal in my bond? A change in their emotions?”  
  
Kilman paused, then inclined her head. “Forgive me, Lord Potter. A Lord would notice something like that. I simply assumed it would be an experienced Lord, rather than someone who knew little about these bonds before he found himself involved in one.”  
  
Potter considered that with a frozen face. Pansy silently urged him not to give Kilman any encouragement, or let her off the hook that easily. Why should he? Kilman had implied that he not only didn’t know a thing about his vassals, he couldn’t control his vassals, and that was  _not_ true.  
  
Finally Potter nodded, and said, “I don’t know exactly what he did. So questioning that is understandable. But I knew that he had, in part, retreated from the bond.”  
  
“And you didn’t know that he wasn’t fully under your legal protection if he wasn’t willingly subject to you?” It was Jenkyns who asked that, and he leaned forwards as if he might fall out of his chair.  
  
“Why should he not be under my legal protection?” Potter turned to face him. “None of you have said anything about the bond needing to be mutual in order to be legally viable.” He glanced back and forth from Jenkyns to Kilman.  
  
“The relationship of Lord and vassal is assumed to flow both ways.” Jenkyns would sound better if he wasn’t struggling with so much glee in his voice, Pansy thought, and wrinkled her nose. She  _really_ didn’t like him. “Of course it is. Otherwise, what you have is a Lord who can hurt his vassals with impunity, or a vassal who can do anything he wants, and violate the rules that the Lord laid down.”  
  
“I didn’t lay down any rules.”  
  
Pansy winced. Ollondors raised a hand as if she would wave to Potter, then tucked it back down and shook her head. Jenkyns sighed, apparently sublimely content and about to float away on a cloud of bliss.   
  
“Then your vassals are little but wild Death Eaters, waiting to break out on anyone innocent who irritates them,” Jenkyns said. “The  _only_ reason that they haven’t already spent time in Azkaban is that we trusted you to restrain them. But if you can’t—”  
  
“I never said that I can’t, or that I was unwilling to!” Potter was snapping now. “You heard about the way I punished Blaise Zabini for rebelling against me. I’m familiar with the concept of setting limits!” He was crossing his arms in front of him now, and Pansy felt a ripple travel down the bond, to her shield mark, which ached a little in response. She rubbed it and hoped that Potter would find a way to make what he was saying matter soon.  
  
“Forgive me, but I’m afraid that you may be,” Jenkyns murmured, looking at him out of doe’s eyes. “You gave so much of yourself to the wizarding world, of course we are afraid that you might not set enough limits. Do you know what you should and should not allow your vassals to get away with?”  
  
“Yes. I  _do_.”  
  
Pansy held her breath and moved out of the way. This was the Lord Potter she had come into the courtroom hoping to hear, the same one who had made plans for their trials and punished Blaise when he had to. This was the Lord who was an actual Lord she could follow, as opposed to a random person granted the Lordship by a combination of luck and circumstances.  
  
Jenkyns either didn’t notice the dangerous change in Potter’s voice or mistook its cause. He narrowed his eyes and said, “Then prove it.”  
  
There was a moment of ringing silence in the court, and Pansy wondered what was going to happen next, if there was any way that Potter  _could_ prove it to someone who wasn’t in the bond. They—she and Draco and Professor Snape and Greg—could feel Potter’s commitment through their bond marks. But what could Potter do to people outside that, except make promises that he probably wouldn’t be able to keep and they wouldn’t believe anyway?  
  
The moment balanced on a knife’s edge, and Pansy didn’t know which way it would fall.  
  
*  
  
Harry’s mind was blazing. He hadn’t known things would come to this. He  _hated_ that things had come to this. He and his vassals had already been through enough. He had thought defeating Voldemort would impress the Wizengamot.  
  
Not enough, or only some of them.  
  
So he turned to Changes, the only person in the courtroom with a wand who he trusted, and asked, “Could you cast a spell that would show the Lordship bond to everyone if I asked you to?”  
  
Kilman raised a hand and then let it fall. Harry ignored her. Sure, she could sense the bond, but she also distrusted him, or didn’t believe him, or something. He saw no reason to accept her interference now.  
  
“How do you know this spell?” Changes spoke in as cool a voice as though this latest charge hadn’t hurt her at all. Only Harry, he thought, or someone as close as he was, could see the tight lines around her eyes. “Is it dangerous?”  
  
“I learned it through doing research on the Lordship bond,” Harry said. He forced out the words. He was so angry that his voice shook. He hoped they wouldn’t think it was fear, because it  _wasn’t_ fucking fear, and he would go to war in any number of ways to  _prove_ that it wasn’t.  
  
“Ha!” Jenkyns stabbed a finger, his nose, his entire body, at Harry. “That proves he didn’t have much knowledge on the Lordship bond  _before!_  So why should we accept his word that he knows what’s he doing as a Lord, and that he’ll set limits on his vassals?”  
  
“The bond was accidental,” Harry said. His voice trembled some more. He wanted to say “you idiot,” but that would help nothing, and probably harm a lot.   
  
 _If only someone could see inside my head,_ he thought, as he turned away from Jenkyns and towards his vassals and Changes,  _then they would know all about the_ real  _sacrifices that I’m making for this bond._  
  
“So I didn’t know much about being a Lord when I began,” Harry went on, talking to Changes this time, “but I read as many books as I could, and looked up what I needed to know. That’s what you do when you don’t know something. Research.” He was a little regretful that Hermione wasn’t in the room to hear him saying that, because she would burst with pride. “I found this spell. It would make the bond visible to other people. I didn’t think I needed it. I knew the bond was there, and everyone else who was in the house with me knew the bond was there. But I find that I need it after all. Will you cast it?”  
  
Changes looked into his eyes. Harry waited, and had to wait. He knew that he could trust Changes to do what she thought was best for the trial, but on the other hand, her conception of what was best and his might be different.  
  
At last, though, Changes nodded and raised her wand. “What is the incantation?”  
  
“We are going to allow her to  _cast_ it?” Jenkyns sounded incredulous.  
  
Harry decided to ignore him. He had other things to think of right now. He kept his eyes on Changes instead, and heard someone else speak up to deal with Jenkyns. Right now, Harry didn’t care if a ceiling tile did it. He just wanted the overbearing idiot silenced.  
  
All his trust, all his focus, was for Changes and her wand.  
  
“The incantation is  _Ligo coram_ ,” Harry said, and saw Changes smile slightly, maybe because she knew the translation of the Latin, before she swished her wand and began to speak the words in a clear, strong voice.  
  
Harry felt the magic settle on him from the very beginning of the incantation. Either Changes was that strong a wizard, or it was just one of those spells that did that. His vision became clouded, as though he was seeing through a snowstorm of lace. Harry jammed his clenched fists into his sides, and waited for the sparks to clear.  
  
They did, soon. And Harry heard enough gasps in the courtroom to make him smile even before he turned around. That meant the spell had worked.  
  
Light, strong connections of silver light, the color of the sparks that had filled Harry’s vision while the bond was working, bound him and his vassals. Even Snape, who stood there looking as if he wished that Harry would get fatally sick right this minute. The bonds sprang from their shield marks and wreathed them, shining.  
  
Harry saw Draco reach out hesitantly towards the connection, and smiled tolerantly. No one except the Lord could manipulate the bond, even though everyone could admire it like this.   
  
Greg stood there with his eyes slightly closed, apparently basking in the glow. Pansy considered hers with intelligent eyes, the sort of scrutiny that Harry thought Snape should be giving it, actually.  
  
 _There’s no excuse whatsoever for Snape’s stupidity_ , he decided, shaking his head.  _He’s more intelligent than that, and he_ knows  _that he’s more intelligent than that. So he has no excuse._  
  
Snape maybe sensed Harry glaring at him, and turned his head. Harry looked back so steadily that Snape glanced away again.  
  
Harry instinctively tried to feel his emotions through the bond, and snorted as he was blocked. Well, of course he was, by whatever Snape had done that caused the problem in the first place.  
  
 _I hope that he gets over this idiocy later on. Maybe I ought to just let him go the minute this trial is done, assuming that he goes free._  
  
Since there was still a question of that, Harry turned back to Jenkyns. “Well?” he asked. “Does my bond with Professor Severus Snape look any different from the others?”  
  
Jenkyns had apparently eaten a whole box of rotten meat, to judge from the expression on his face. It was one of the sweeter moments of Harry’s life. He tried to keep his head up and his face neutral, but it was a challenge not to just break out snickering.  
  
“You must have cheated,” Jenkyns whispered. “Somehow.”  
  
“This isn’t an exam you can cheat on,” Harry said. “It’s not a game. This is my bloody  _life,_ and the lives of my vassals, and I think I’ve been patient enough. Somehow this turned into a trial about me again, even though it really should have been about my vassal, Severus Snape. Why is that? Are you so eager to see me caged instead of walking around free?”  
  
Jenkyns shook his head, but he didn’t have an answer this time. Harry turned back to Kilman. “Well? What do you think? Is my bond with him really weaker than the others?”  
  
Kilman looked into his eyes. Harry stared back. He didn’t know what she would say, but he had put on the best demonstration he could that he still cared about Snape and Snape was under his protection. He didn’t know what else he could do.  
  
If this didn’t work…  
  
Harry gritted his teeth. If it didn’t work, he would try something else, whatever it took. And he didn’t even think that was the bond talking. That was just grey determination at this point, determination made of steel, the relentless stubbornness that would let him continue despite all the stupidity around him. Snape had done his best to destroy his own freedom. So had other people.   
  
Harry was going to make him free whether he  _wanted_ to be or not.  
  
“I may have been mistaken,” Kilman said slowly.  
  
Harry’s eyes snapped back to her. Kilman rose to her feet as though she needed to see the bonds from another angle, and then sank back into her seat, nodding.   
  
“I did sense that one of the bonds was weaker than the others,” she said. “It’s a matter of long training, and I pride myself on not often making mistakes.” She looked at Harry again.  
  
Harry waited.  
  
“But  _not often_ is not  _never_.” Kilman turned her hands up. “I didn’t know this spell existed. I would have used it if I had. In the meantime, I do think that my method of demonstrating the connective power of bonds will remain trustworthy most often. Particularly with Lords or Ladies who have many vassals under their sway.” She nodded once. “But in the meantime, I was wrong. Professor Severus Snape is bound to Harry Potter as strongly as any other vassal.”  
  
Harry blinked. Kilman looked at him, and there was a warning in her gaze.  
  
 _She knows,_ Harry thought at once.  _Never heard of that spell before, right. She would have had to, if she works in this particular field of magical theory. She knows that it only shows the connection the Lord feels to the vassal, and not the connection from the vassal’s side._  
  
As long as Harry felt that Snape was still his vassal, then the spell would show that it was so. Harry hadn’t been thinking much about that; he was just infuriated with the arguments that he didn’t care enough about his vassals to keep them out of legal trouble.  
  
But Kilman had been convinced by something else, maybe the ferocity with which he stood up for Snape and the others, and she was letting it go.  
  
 _Good._ Harry hoped she wouldn’t show up later saying he owed her a debt or something, but at the moment, he would take that over Snape going to prison or being Kissed. He glanced back at the Wizengamot. “Does the testimony of yet  _another_ magical theory expert convince you that I do know my vassals?” he asked, unable to keep the dry tone out of his voice.  
  
Jenkyns refused to look at him. Well, he might, as far as Harry was concerned. He didn’t care much what Jenkyns  _did_ do, as long as he stopped trying to make trouble for Harry and his vassals.  
  
But Ollondors, of all people, looked troubled. Harry stared at her. “Yes?” he demanded. He didn’t really know what she could have to say  _now_ , when she was the one who had been instrumental in making sure the entire Wizengamot didn’t turn against him.  
  
“I do not question your knowledge of your vassals,” said Ollondors. “Or the magical theory that vindicates you.” She glanced around as if wanting everyone to know that, or make sure that all eyes were on her. “But I do question their loyalty. At least, the loyalty of this one.” She indicated Snape. “He did something that weakened the bond, or something that reads to an expert as if it weakened the bond. And you have already had one vassal turn on you. Can you really trust this one?”  
  
 _Oh,_ Harry thought, feeling his heart begin to beat again. Ollondors wanted to make sure that Harry wasn’t going to be taken down by someone stabbing him in the back, and bring down her power and prestige along with his.  
  
“I’ll answer for his actions,” Harry said. “And if someday he goes free of the bond, then I won’t have to worry about it anymore.”  
  
Ollondors frowned a little, but in the end, she nodded. “Then I don’t see any reason in putting off the vote,” she said. “Hands up, those who think that Severus Snape should be acquitted of the charges against him.”  
  
Harry could hear his own heart, like a fist thumping on velvet, in his ears. He was glad, at the moment, that he couldn’t feel any emotions from Snape. If the man was upset or annoyed or fearful, Harry didn’t want to know that. And anyway, he was the one who had caused all the trouble, so he could just feel that, and Harry could avoid dealing with it.  
  
There was a long rustle of motion, as though every member of the Wizengamot was waiting for someone else to go first. And then the hands began rising, not around Jenkyns and the people who sat near him, but everywhere else.  
  
Harry looked about with eyes that burned. He thought he could see McGonagall doing the same thing, and Dumbledore popped a sweet into his mouth in the portrait and chuckled with delight. Harry could even feel Pansy sighing through the bond, as though putting down a heavy burden.  
  
The hands were up in all places, most of them. A few people sat on their hands, but so what? Harry knew it was a majority, knew it was enough to clear Snape. He swallowed through a dry throat, and barely listened to the official announcement of the acquittal that Ollondors made. Instead, he did what he had promised himself he wouldn’t do, and turned around to see the expression on Snape’s face.  
  
Snape’s face, that looked like a mask. He folded his arms in front of him and turned away with a sharp jerk, sharp enough to make the feeble bond that Harry still had with him vibrate a little. Harry sighed and turned back to the front.  
  
Ollondors was making a speech about justice and forgiveness now, and Harry had to pay attention. There was chatter all around him. He had to hear the announcement of when the next trial was going to be, and whether there was any further consequence for Snape.  
  
It seemed that Snape would have to stay under house arrest for the same amount of time as Harry: in the same house as Harry if he was still a vassal, in a different one if the bond was severed. And he would have to submit to having his wand checked every week by Aurors, to make sure that he hadn’t cast any Dark spells.  
  
Harry thought that was fair. Then again, he had looked away from Snape, and didn’t have to see what  _he_ thought about it.  
  
He didn’t miss the jump beside him, either, when Ollondors looked down at Pansy and announced that her trial would be next, the day after tomorrow. But Harry was finally in the position where he could send emotions down the bond comfortably, and even put his hand on Pansy’s shoulder and squeeze comfortingly, and not feel awkward about it.  
  
And let Snape think what he would about  _that_.


	47. Interlude

  
“I’ll do what I can to free you.”  
  
Pansy didn’t respond for long seconds. She was looking into the platter that Kreacher had brought her as if it contained all the mysteries of life. Harry couldn’t help looking with her, but it still remained a platter, loaded with sandwiches and bacon and slices of pork and treacle tart, which Harry thought was probably Pansy’s favorite food, but not much else.  
  
Pansy finally swallowed dryly and looked up. “Thank you,” she said. Her emotions made the bond sing with weariness.  
  
Harry gripped her shoulder. “You don’t have the Mark, and I managed to free Severus despite him messing it up so badly.” In front of the others, he would call Snape by his first name. He didn’t want them to think that he had exiled Severus from his consideration, although that was pretty close to what had happened.  
  
Pansy bit her lip and shook her head, wordless. “I don’t—I’m not as worried about something like that. I don’t intend to sabotage my trial the way he did.” For a moment, the emotions coming through the bond altered, and she and Harry exchanged a look that Harry thought came as close to perfect understanding as they would ever achieve. They  _both_ thought that what Snape had done was utterly idiotic.  
  
“But I do wonder who they’re going to have testify against me.” Pansy’s emotions had already sunk again, and her eyes looked much the same, so weary that Harry wondered if she hadn’t been sleeping well and he somehow hadn’t picked up on that through the bond. “It’s—not going to be easy to remember who might have a grudge against me. I insulted so many people, and laughed at them, and hurt them, because the Carrows and the other Death Eaters ordered me to. And sometimes without any orders. Because I was afraid, and that seemed like a good strategy to survive.”  
  
“I know that you didn’t always do right,” Harry told her quietly. He wondered for a second if he would be feeling this sorry for Pansy if she wasn’t one of his vassals, but ended up discarding the thought. The problem was that he couldn’t know one way or the other. She  _was_ one of his vassals, and dealing with reality was better than hiding from it, the way Snape had done. “But we’ll go into the trial and hope that we can win it, anyway.”  
  
Pansy nodded. “I wonder why Ollondors said that I should be next, instead of Draco, though,” she said. “Or Mr. Malfoy, if they didn’t care about keeping the vassals’ trials all close together. That would bring more publicity.”  
  
Harry had to smile a little. “Because Ollondors is on our side, as much as she can be, and she’s trying to give us a bit of a holiday and some rest. She thought your trial would do that.”  
  
Pansy half-snorted. “Oh, yes. For  _you_.”  
  
“Well, yeah,” Harry said, and held her gaze until Pansy rolled her eyes at him. So she did understand about political expediency. It was probably just harder to apply it to yourself than to think about it in the abstract.  
  
“Fine,” Pansy said. “I don’t—if you and Changes need me to say anything, then tell me, but otherwise, I’m going to bed. I don’t want to think about it. I just want to rest, and let it wash over me.” She stood up, and pushed back the plate that Kreacher had prepared for her. Of course, that made Kreacher appear, squeaking in distress.  
  
“Take the plate with you,” Harry said, when she stared at him in a silent demand that he  _do_ something. “It’ll make him happy, and that keeps more people from getting upset.”  
  
Pansy sighed and shook her head. “Fine.” She scooped up the plate, and accepted the floating glass of pumpkin juice that Kreacher offered her as well, eyes immobile on Harry’s face. It annoyed Harry enough that he finally looked at her and stretched out his hand in a silent demand for an explanation.  
  
“Remember to let yourself rest, too,” Pansy said abruptly, and strode away.  
  
Harry sat there for a little while after she’d gone, sipping at his own pumpkin juice and thinking about it. Then he nodded and stood up. They had a day before Pansy’s trial began. He could speak to Changes tomorrow. For now, he thought going to bed was an excellent idea. Greg had already gone, on Harry’s insistence. He’d stood guard outside Harry’s door all night last night, and was near to dropping. Harry had demanded that he go so that Greg could protect him later, and Greg wasn’t foolish enough to ignore a direct order from his Lord.  
  
“Potter.”  
  
 _Think of the bloody devil,_ Harry thought, and turned around to face Snape, who—of course—he hadn’t felt coming through their diminished bond.  
  
*  
  
Severus didn’t feel Potter’s emotions anymore, not with the Occlumency shields he had erected against the possibility, but he could taste all the bitterness and rage that he needed on the back of his tongue.  
  
From the way Potter turned around, slow and deliberate, and the way he looked Severus up and down as if  _Severus_ was the one responsible for this farce, Severus was going to get the battle he wanted, if he persisted. He took a slow sliding step nearer. Potter had seemed weary before, but he didn’t now. Or maybe he just wasn’t weary enough to run away.  
  
“You have deprived me,” Severus began.  
  
He never reached the end of the sentence, because the carefully-prepared speech flew away from him at the look of utter  _contempt_ on Potter’s face. He flicked his fingers at Severus, snapping them, stealing Severus’s breath. He shook his head, and his voice came out so thick and heavy that Severus had to concentrate to make out the words, as if Potter had suddenly acquired an accent. “How  _dare_ you talk like that to me? How  _dare_ you pretend that part of this isn’t your own fault? If you hadn’t done whatever you did to the bond, then we wouldn’t have had a problem with the trial in the first place!”  
  
Severus felt as though his breath had turned to fire in his lungs. “They would have come up with anything they could to discredit me, and you  _know_ —”  
  
“They were going along with it,” Potter said, and took a step nearer him. “No one was questioning the portrait. Jenkyns acted like he was listening! Ollondors was managing the whole thing as well as she could to make sure that she got some power for herself.”  
  
“You would be  _wise_ not to trust her.” Severus thought he had infused that one word with venom enough to pierce even Potter’s armor, but from the way Potter laughed breathlessly, he had miscalculated.  
  
Potter spoke before Severus could reach for the deeper wells of his poison. “I know that she only wants power, but for the moment, her goals and mine coincide. That means that I can trust her to go along with it for a while.”   
  
His gaze locked on Severus, and he shook his head. “Not that I can trust  _you_. Not that you’ll ever trust  _me_ , or let yourself be trusted. You nearly sabotaged  _everything_ today because you need everything your own way, don’t you? You didn’t tell me that you’d done something that would weaken the bond to someone looking in at it from outside!”  
  
Severus wrenched his hands apart at his sides, but Potter still didn’t have the sense to back away or look intimidated. Severus spoke as softly as he could when what he wanted was to scream aloud and lunge at Potter. “I did what I had to do to protect myself from the takeover the bond was doing of my mind.  _You_ need not pretend that you can understand everything, or anything, of what I went through—”  
  
“You don’t need to be such a self-righteous arse,” Potter snapped. He had stopped moving nearer, but Severus could feel the force of his trembling rage anyway, and not through the bond, simply hovering in the air between them. “I know that you want to be free of a master. I _know,_ okay? I felt it through the bond before you muted it. And now you’re stomping around and throwing a temper tantrum because you had a few  _minutes_ of thinking that you might go to Azkaban. A few  _minutes_.” He frowned in an odd way, his lip curling down, maybe the only way he could imagine frowning when his contempt for Severus was so great and sharp. “You’re an ungrateful, oblivious, stupid  _bastard_ , Snape.”  
  
That insult stung more than Potter could possibly know; one of the favorite ways for his father to taunt Severus when he had been young was to imply that he wasn’t Tobias’s real son, that Eileen had got herself pregnant by some other man. Only when Severus began to reply that he would gladly have had a different father had Tobias stopped using it. But to hear it all fresh and dripping with scorn from the mouth of someone like Potter made Severus swell and find the poison he had been neglecting.  
  
“Do you think I wanted to put my fate in the hands of someone who had been entrusted with a far more delicate task, and nearly failed in carrying it out?” he whispered harshly. “Someone who was supposed to  _die_ to save the world, and nearly couldn’t do  _that_ properly? Someone who became Lord of us all only by  _accident_?”  
  
Potter’s face flamed all up and down like summer sunshine, the way that his father’s face would sometimes flame when Severus got in a good insult, right before he would call on Black and Pettigrew, and everything would go to hell. Severus found himself bracing for that, longing for it. It would repay Potter properly for thinking that he was above being like his father and the other people who had interfered in Severus’s life, if he made a wrong move now and turned out to be nothing but an arrogant bully.  
  
Instead of approaching him and trying to trounce him, though, Potter pulled back his right sleeve and laid his hand on his shield mark. “Do you want to be freed?” he asked.  
  
Severus stared at him. Potter looked back, with the same Potter face and red cheeks and messy hair. Not the same eyes, but Severus had learned to compensate for the stunning effect of Lily’s eyes in that kind of face by now.   
  
He should have. He  _should_ have.  
  
“That sounds like a threat,” Severus said when he could find his tongue. “Do you think that Albus would approve?”  
  
Potter shook his head with the kind of weary move that told Severus he wasn’t interested in debate. That would ordinarily have been fine with Severus, who didn’t want debate, anyway. He told himself it  _should_ be, that of course it was. He swallowed. His throat hurt.  
  
“I thought I could free you, and then you could leave me behind and go do something else,” Potter explained, slowly enough that it was insulting. “You’re so unhappy in the bond that I thought I’d offer.” His hand paused above the shield mark, poised like a hawk about to descend. “Do you want to be free?”  
  
Severus found his tongue as soon as he could, which was long after he  _should_ have found it, but that was one reason he was glad there was no one here but Potter and himself. “The Wizengamot may interpret that the wrong way.”  
  
“They gave you the sentence when they thought your fate was linked to mine,” Potter retorted. “We can show them that it isn’t, that you can do whatever you like and there’s no way for me to stop you.” His fingers tightened, clamping on nothing but air. “What would you like? For me to free you, or continue this pathetic bond that embarrasses you so much?”  
  
Severus stared at him helplessly. He should not have been helpless, he knew it, and it was another reason for the burning resentment that filled him—burning not like flame, but like bile, thick and scorching and acidic and devouring far too many things in its path. “You should have realized what you were doing and never set up this bond in the first place,” he whispered harshly.  
  
Potter didn’t laugh. The sound he made, or barked, was too bitter to be called that. “Really, Snape? That’s your brilliant retort? That’s the direction you’re heading? I’m sorry, I’m not  _smart_ enough to really understand it.” He brought his head down and eyed Severus again. “Because I think all the Time-Turners are destroyed, and there’s no way for me to go back in time and change things so that you’re free again and the bond was never established. Believe me, the amount of trouble you’re causing me? I  _would_. Or at least I would have made sure the bond only covered Draco and Pansy and Greg, if I could choose. You and Blaise are the most stubborn and ungrateful shits I’ve ever met.”  
  
“Why should I be  _grateful_ for slavery?”  
  
Severus knew he could have worked up a convincing head of steam if he had been left alone to do so. He knew that he would have produced arguments that would have struck Potter like well-forged swords, that he would have produced ones strong enough to make even the ridiculous Potter slink away in shame. But he was interrupted.  
  
“Because you would have been subjected to Voldemort’s obedience curse otherwise?” Potter looked straight at him, and Severus flinched more than a little from the light in his eyes. “Because there’s no telling what would have happened to you if the bond hadn’t intervened? That’s the alternative. Me or him. It shouldn’t have been, but that’s the way it was. And that owes just as much to Voldemort’s desire for revenge on you as anything else.”  
  
“If you  _dare_ to blame me for this because of the part I played in the war,” Severus began, in a hoarse whisper that even he didn’t recognize as belonging to himself.  
  
Potter held up a weary hand. That shouldn’t have functioned the way it did, either, choking Severus’s voice back into his throat. It was only a gesture. How could a  _gesture_ have so much power over him?  
  
 _If the bond was commanding me, it would be easy._  
  
But Severus could feel no stir of the bond in his mind, and he trusted in the strength of his shields. It baffled him, and infuriated him, and still he had to stand there quietly while Potter spoke, staring at the wall.  
  
“I don’t blame you for the part you played in the war. I’m even ready to honor you for it, now that I understand what kind of pressure you were under from Dumbledore and the rest of them. But I showed you that I honored you for that by the part I tried to play in your trial defense.” Potter’s voice was rising. “What did you do with that but  _throw it back in my face?_ You showed that you didn’t give a shit what I thought of you. The most important thing to you has always been what  _you_ thought of  _me_.”  
  
He turned around, and the softness had gone from his eyes as it had from his voice. “You’ve had the chance to rescue yourself. I think it’s ridiculous that you needed this many chances to see that if the bond compels you to be a good little vassal, it compels me to be a good Lord, too. There’s no one spared here, Snape. There’s no way that you can say you’re the only victim.”  
  
Before Severus could retort against that, Potter caught himself up as suddenly as if he was a horse, and had pulled against a rein. He almost hissed as he did. “What does it  _matter_?” he whispered.  
  
Severus wondered if the bond was tormenting him for speaking such words to a vassal, but didn’t know how he could find out when he was distant from the bond, or even if he wanted it to be so. He waited with his heart beating in his throat, oddly distant from what felt like his own emotions.  
  
Potter shook his head at him. “I’m not interested in  _blame_ ,” he said. “Not the way you are. We can blame Voldemort for this whole war, and Dumbledore for setting up the situation with the Unbreakable Vows where you had to kill him. But eventually, it doesn’t matter. There’s always someone else to blame. There’s always some other question you can ask them to fuss about. Well, I reckon I’ve had enough of the blame to be tired of it.”  
  
Severus found his voice. “If  _you_ are tired of it, what do you imagine  _I_ am? To know that I am only considered not a danger to society because you volunteered to watch over me—”  
  
“You’re a genius with potions,” Potter interrupted. “You were a brilliant spy. You figured out a way to distance yourself from the bond when  _I_ had barely figured out how to manipulate it.”  
  
Severus eyed him in silence, wondering where this was going. One thing he had proven to himself in the last few minutes was that he wasn’t good at analyzing the twists and turns of Potter’s mind.  
  
“You’re  _more_ than smart enough to figure out that laying blame is the least interesting part of all of this, and to get past it,” Potter said. “If you had wanted to.” He eyed Severus again in that distant, enraging way. “Which means that I don’t think you want to, and that makes me tired.”  
  
He walked out of the kitchen. By the time that Severus got up to him—trying not to hurry so that it wouldn’t seem as if he was  _chasing_  Potter, of all the undignified things to do—Potter was climbing the stairs with a slow, heavy step.  
  
“Potter!” Severus called after him, then stopped. His voice had had a sound that could only be called a screech, and he had no intention of sounding as if he was screeching after Potter.  
  
“What?” Potter still didn’t look at him, and continued climbing as steadily as if he never intended to again.  
  
“You can’t blame me for this,” Severus said. His voice would be reasonable enough if he could calm down before he spoke. That was still harder than it should have been; he had the feeling that a smidgen less of self-control would have seen him screaming at Potter the way he had when Black escaped in Potter’s third year. “You  _cannot_. You know that the politics of the Wizengamot are more tangled than most people can cope with. We are lucky to have had your trial go as easily as it did.”  
  
Potter turned around on the stairs then, but kept his hands on the railing, apparently deciding not to come back down to confront Severus. He shook his head a little. “Make up your mind, Snape. This trial went easily. It didn’t. It went easily because of no effort on my part. I don’t understand you. I should understand things.”  
  
Severus wanted to say that he had never put forth such contradictions, but his voice was stuck in his throat and wouldn’t come out.  
  
“Pansy told me that I should go to bed and make sure that I rested,” said Potter, around a yawn. “I’m realizing now how smart she was. Why don’t we save all the acknowledgments of blame and things like that for the morning?”  
  
“You will release me from the bond.”  
  
Potter’s yawn faded, along with a tension to his face that Severus hadn’t realized was there. For long seconds, Potter stood motionless and looked at him, and Severus had the humiliating feeling that he should beg Potter’s apology. But then Potter’s face went motionless, and he nodded.  
  
“Of course,” he said. “I’d hoped to use tomorrow to prepare for Pansy’s trial, because we didn’t have any warning it was coming before this, and the extra day is as much of a grace period as Ollondors can get for us. But of course, if you want to be free of the bond, then that must come first.” He swept a low bow. “It took a lot out of me to free Blaise, though. So I’ll need a few hours to think about how I can be comfortable and clear-headed after you attain  _your_ freedom.”  
  
“Do  _not_ try to make me feel as if I am at fault here,” Severus warned him, voice tight. “There is no way that I will accept the blame.”  
  
“And you have no interest in anything except blame again.” Potter’s hands tightened for a moment as if they would crack the wood of the banisters, and Severus thought he saw a fat spark flash up from the silver shield on his right arm. “Fine. I know what you want in the morning, and I’ll go to bed, and prepare for it in the morning, like I said. Good  _night_.”  
  
Although Severus knew a dozen retorts that could have withered Potter’s pretensions, he used none of them, for some reason. He stood there and watched Potter ascend the stairs, and he did not speak. Then he went back to his own bedroom, and sat on the end of the bed, and stared at the wall.  
  
Not until very late in the evening did he remember Mr. Zabini, and wonder where he was.  
  
*  
  
Blaise’s hands shook as he loaded the shoulder bag he had found in one of the old bedrooms with at least half a dozen of the sandwiches the house-elf had left on the shelves in the kitchen under Preservation Charms. The charms meant they wouldn’t get squashed or bruised in the bag, and  _that_ meant he would have something to eat later, when he began to get hungry. That was what he told himself, although he had never studied Preservation Charms that much, not even for that long-ago essay in Charms.  
  
He was going on a journey, and he meant to walk or Floo or Portkey, if he had to, until he reached the point where he could…  
  
When he could walk into his mother’s house, and call her Mother again, and fall in submission at her feet if he needed to. Whatever he had to do, to convince her that he hadn’t gone over to the enemy.  
  
He swung the bag over his shoulder, grabbed preserved bottles of tea and water, and popped them into it. Then he tied it shut and looked up towards the stairs. Part of him wanted to leave as soon as possible, to get out of here and away from Potter’s reach and influence.  
  
But the other part of him reminded him that he had no wand, and that it would be easier to Apparate, and he didn’t even have to take the bag of food with him if he could do that. And there was only one person in the house who had a wand.   
  
Blaise began, soft-footed, to creep up the stairs towards Professor Snape’s room.


	48. Struggle

Severus lifted his head at the knock on the door. He thought he would have felt at least a slight twinge in the bond if it was Potter out there, or any of the other vassals. Though now that he thought about it, the only twinge that he might have felt was from Draco; both Parkinson and Goyle were sleeping some of the effects of the day off, although Severus suspected it was Potter’s sense and not Mr. Goyle’s alone that had ordered him to bed.  
  
That left the elder Malfoys, Potter’s ridiculous friends, or Mr. Zabini. And that they hadn’t started shouting through the door right away meant someone was out there who had a sense of propriety and respect left for Severus, which reduced the possibilities to one.  
  
“Come in, Mr. Zabini,” Severus replied, and thought he heard a slight gasp before the door swung open and Mr. Zabini stepped into the room. He tried to repress the surge of satisfaction that came from that. He should  _not_ take such pride in his ability to still impress his Slytherin students. If he could not do more than that, he deserved to suffer.  
  
Mr. Zabini’s eyes moved around the bedroom as if he thought Potter might be hiding in here. Severus sneered at the thought, and the sneer drew Zabini’s eyes back to his face.  
  
“No one can overhear us?” Blaise whispered.  
  
That sounded like it might precede a confession of weakness, and any true Slytherin would wish to keep unfamiliar ears from overhearing one of those. Severus nodded and sat up. “No one can,” he confirmed, when Blaise continued to watch him. “What did you wish to say? Is it about your mother?”  
  
Blaise’s shoulders jerked, and he lowered his head. “I have to go to her,” he whispered. “She’s my only hope now.”  
  
Severus restrained his immediate response—giving those had done him little good tonight—and considered the bowed dark head before he replied. “Well. Perhaps you should consider whether she would receive you.”  
  
Blaise lifted his head, something as bright as hope in the backs of his eyes. “She misunderstood what I was doing. She’ll welcome me back once she realizes.”  
  
“ _Will_ she?” Severus could restrain many things, and should have better than he had so far, but not his skepticism. It was for Blaise’s own good, he told himself. If he reached his mother—a large  _if_ , if he intended to travel with no wand and the Ministry hunting for him—she would most likely only cast him back again.  
  
“She’ll understand.” Blaise glanced for a moment at his right arm, where the shield mark had been. “The—that bloody thing is gone. Don’t you think that’s going to  _matter_ to her?”  
  
“I know not,” Severus admitted. He hadn’t known Blaise well enough in school to predict his every movement, the way he usually could with Draco and Mr. Goyle. Blaise had been closed off in a way that Severus had understood when he watched the boy interact with his mother. Abused children often  _did_ close off in that way, although Severus and Potter had chosen other methods.  
  
 _And I do not wish to occupy my mind with Potter._  
  
“Is she the sort to stand up to pressure from the Ministry?” Severus had to ask. “Or to lie low and not attract it in the first place?” Perhaps she would be willing to accept her wayward son back with some modification of his behavior, but Severus felt free to doubt that she would if it came with the Ministry bearing down on her.  
  
“Well,” Blaise said, and crept even closer, and lowered his voice. Severus leaned in to listen.  
  
He knew that he should have known the trick for what it was when Blaise’s hand darted out, sealing on his wand holster and pulling hard against it. Once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin, and he had seen that Blaise’s mother had raised him in ways that made him even more the typical Slytherin than most others.  
  
Severus quashed the impulse to pull away at once, which would have meant that his stolen wand would slide out of its sheath and into Blaise’s hand. Instead, he twisted to the side, and brought up a fist with a memory pulling it along. He had very rarely had to struggle against someone else like this since the days of the Marauders.  
  
Blaise was  _not_  experienced in this kind of fighting; Severus would be surprised if he was. His mother had the typical pure-blood valuation of magic over one’s hands, and she would have passed that particular disgraceful prejudice on to her son. His chin hit Severus’s doubled knuckles, and he collapsed.  
  
Severus stood up, breathing faster than such short exercise warranted. But in this case, it was the speed of his mind and not his body that made it so. He stared at Blaise, and understood the situation as well as though he had Legilimized the boy.  
  
Blaise wanted to go back to his mother. It would be nearly impossible on foot, and he would have little chance to steal a broom or a Portkey. With a wand, he could Apparate, and arrive there all the sooner for his groveling. And there was only one wand in the house.  
  
He had never come here intending to ask for comfort, or listen to advice. He had only wanted to go back to what he knew.   
  
He had not interfered in the trial intending to take revenge for what Potter had done to him, as Severus had thought was his major motive. Instead, he had wanted to do something that would make him look worthy and impressive in his mother’s eyes, when it was reported in the newspapers. Nothing had changed, despite the way Potter had released him from the bond at his own request. He was mired in the abuse he had suffered, and it would not change.  
  
Severus thought that the second most pitiful thing he had ever heard.  
  
But only the second, for the first was his own behavior—or what his own behavior might have been, if he had followed the boy’s example.  
  
What was he doing, but behaving as he had always done? Nothing Potter did would satisfy him, not even the thing he had thought most would, the end of the bond and his connection to Potter. Potter had promised it, and Severus had thought the sensation of joy would flood him, joy and fierce pride, that he was his own man again.  
  
But that had not happened, and it should have. Instead, Severus had felt nothing except the same bitter resentment against Potter that he always had when he had to give the Boy-Who-Lived nothing worse than a detention, and watch over him, and guard his life, and sacrifice his standing in the wizarding world and his own mentor in order to ensure Potter’s victory at the end of the war. As if the situation had never changed. But this bond was different than the one he had endured with the Dark Lord or Albus. This bond could be ended without causing someone’s death. Since Blaise had been freed, Severus  _knew_ that.  
  
It was no pleasant thing to Severus, to find he had been laboring under self-delusion, and that the past could so constrain and channel his thoughts.  
  
Of course, in some respects, Severus tried to persuade himself, while he had the feeling of standing at the back of a speeding ray of light that was opening up new prospects he did not wish to see, Potter was the same as his other masters. He did not hold back when it came to expressing his opinion of Severus. He had the power to command or condemn him. He hadn’t let him go at first, even though he had known through the bond, more intimately than the Dark Lord through  _his_ Mark, that Severus was in despair at the thought of being bound.  
  
But once the first moments of suicidal despair were past, Severus thought he should have been acting rationally. He had convinced himself that he was, or at least that he was once he had established his emotional distance from the bond. His shields had to protect him against influence from the bond leaking through and controlling his thoughts.   
  
He should have realized that things other than the bond might influence him.  
  
Blaise stirred, and Severus drew his wand and crouched down with the tip against the hollow of Blaise’s throat. Blaise stared at him with large eyes that had gone larger with his own despair, and started to raise his hand.  
  
 _This is what I am. What I was. As irrational, as determined to take all sorts of chances for the_ possibility  _that I might be released from the bond._  
  
“I would  _not_ ,” said Severus, in the sort of warning tone that his Slytherins had learned to respect.  
  
And still Blaise made a grab at the wand, because apparently his irrationality had become actual stupidity. Severus Stunned him, and sat back on his heels, still contemplating the boy’s motionless body.  
  
Severus had never needed many lessons. He had learned how to act around his father very early in life, so as to minimize the possibility of getting hurt. It didn’t always work, but it made many torments easier to bear than they might have been, and Severus could see how bad it  _could_ have been with his mother. And he had seen the same thing when he came to Hogwarts: what professors might be challenged, who would be less lenient, what House divisions meant and did not mean, how he could be friends with Lily and how he could not. Others pushed too far, and Severus learned from their mistakes. The only situation in which he had not been able to profit from the experience of other students was that with the Marauders, because they tortured no one else as they did him.  
  
When the universe itself handed him a free example of what he could have become if he intended to pursue this new direction with the bond too far, Severus was not one to disdain it.  
  
*  
  
Harry opened his eyes to a shaft of late morning light working its way in through the dusty curtains, and frowned. He was amazed that Severus had let him sleep so long. He would have wanted to be freed from the bond early in the morning, surely.  
  
Automatically, Harry reached through the bond to try and figure out how Severus felt about the bond, and then sighed in disgust. Right, he couldn’t. Severus was no longer bonded to him as strongly.  
  
And Harry probably didn’t have the right to call him by his first name, anyway.  _Snape_ would probably have found it presumptuous.  
  
Harry sat up and slid his feet into his battered trainers. At least the sleep had done well for his mind, and he would be better able to face up to the exhaustion that would follow ending the bond with Snape.  
  
Someone knocked at the door, and Harry jerked in that direction before he thought about it, his hand flying to his right arm. The link with Snape wasn’t so weak as to forbid him knowing that he was standing right outside Harry’s door, right now.  
  
Harry hesitated only for a second. He would want to wait to unbind Snape until he had some food in him, but there was no reason to make it worse by making Snape stand at the door. “Come in,” he called.  
  
Snape opened the door and stepped inside, shutting it precisely behind him. Harry shifted his weight a little. Snape stood like he was about to curse Harry. When it came to a duel, Harry knew he couldn’t do much without a wand, but he hoped to give a convincing account of himself nonetheless.  
  
Now, though, Snape simply stood there and scowled at Harry. Harry had no idea why, and he looked back in silence, until they seemed to pass Snape’s invisible tolerance limits. He turned away with a dismissive snort and sank down onto the bed, putting his head in his hands.  
  
Harry stared at him, and reached after Snape’s emotions again. They were no clearer than ever, though. If this was a sign of Snape relenting and easing his stranglehold on the shields that cut off his part of the bond, Harry didn’t think he was going to do it soon. “What’s the matter?” he finally asked.  
  
That made Snape lift his head and get to the answer, at least. Harry relaxed a little. Snape wouldn’t be Snape if he went around accepting Harry’s pity instead of rejecting it.  
  
“Mr. Zabini came into my room and got close enough to me, with a sob story, that he could try to steal my wand.”  
  
Harry gasped, and looked immediately for the wand at Snape’s side, although he thought he would have missed it when Snape came into the room if it was gone. Snape rolled his eyes and muttered something that sounded like, “I did say  _try_ ,” as he drew the wand out a little and let Harry see his fingers resting firmly on the handle.  
  
“Was he planning to use it to try and hurt someone?” Harry changed the last word at the last moment. He didn’t want to ask if Blaise was planning on hurting him. That would only make Snape think he was afraid.  
  
“No,” said Snape. “At least, I cannot answer for what he would do if he had managed to gain possession of it, but I do not  _particularly_ think so. He wanted to go to his mother, and Apparition was probably the fastest way he could conceive of to do so.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “He’s never going to be out of her control, is he? At least not without some serious Mind-Healing.”  
  
“Which I recommend that you do not attempt.” Snape’s voice was so harsh that Harry gaped at him. He would have thought Snape would use that voice to talk about  _him_ , instead of one of his Slytherin students. In fact, that voice  _had_ been employed against Harry last night. Snape seemed to understand the way Harry gaped at him, and cleared his throat, glancing away uncomfortably. “You have done enough for him, more than enough, and he continues to reject your efforts. Perhaps if he was still your vassal, you would have no choice, and perhaps someone will manage to heal him. But I beg that you do not give it another thought.”  
  
Harry blinked and nodded slowly. He tried to remember if he’d ever heard Snape use the word “beg.” No, he didn’t think so. Probably he’d only use it about something like this, when it sounded like he was speaking out of real disgust and contempt for Blaise. “Did you Stun him? Is he still Stunned?”  
  
“Yes, I did, and he is.” Snape faced Harry again, his eyes dark and so intense that Harry bristled. He thought Snape was about to continue their argument from yesterday, and he really wasn’t in any mood for that. He started to open his mouth and say that he would go down, have breakfast, and then free Snape from the bond. That ought to distract Snape sufficiently.  
  
“In seeking to resist the bond, I succumbed to control of another sort.”  
  
Harry barely managed not to shake his head. Snape was turning in too many different directions, making things too confusing. “What do you mean? Was the Dark Mark influencing you or something?”  
  
Snape gave him a look of the sort that would have made him scream, when he was eleven. And Neville probably would have fainted. “ _No_ ,” he said, with a little gesture towards his left arm that Harry didn’t think he was consciously aware of. The bond wouldn’t let him feel Snape’s emotions right now, but Harry thought he was more observant of Snape than Snape knew about. “I merely meant that I was laboring under the weight of past impressions of you, and not seeing what was actually there.”  
  
“You  _think_?” It slipped out before Harry could prevent it. “This bond hasn’t been easy for me either, Snape! I tried—”  
  
“I will most likely have the courage and patience to say this only once. Listen.”  
  
And Harry restrained himself to make it happen, partially because Snape was still his vassal, and because he was curious. He’d felt Snape being suicidal, and then unhappy, and then withdrawn. There didn’t seem to be much of a reason for him to change his mind.  
  
Snape breathed out, and said, “I saw in Mr. Zabini what I might become in my resistance to the bond. Pitiful, subjected to one overriding goal. In my case, it was freedom and not the kind of domination that Mr. Zabini would have tumbled into if he went back to his mother, but the fight for freedom is another compulsion if one pursues it too avidly.”  
  
Harry wanted to say that he didn’t understand, but then he thought back to the Horcruxes and the overriding impulse to get rid of Voldemort. He’d never felt that he could turn aside, even after he had figured out that Dumbledore had manipulated him and  _he_ was the last Horcrux.  
  
So he kept quiet, and watched Snape struggle in silence, with Snape’s head bowing further and further until his voice was muffled by the strands of hair that brushed his lips.  
  
“I—did not wish to be bound,” Snape said. “But that means I do not wish to be bound by  _anything._  Particularly impulses that I did not understand, but could have understood if I had made the effort. In avoiding the bond, I would have become a different kind of slave. And finding myself free of the bond wouldn’t have ended it.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. “You would have gone on hating me and not feeling free, especially since you have to be under house arrest for a year.”  
  
Snape’s head came up. “ _Yes_ ,” he said. “How did you know that? I know the bond would not have told you as much. Not right now.”  
  
Harry struggled for an answer, not because he didn’t have it but because the words were difficult, and because part of him felt so sorry for Snape, poor Snape, who didn’t know this. He didn’t want Snape to hear the pity in his voice. “I—just do. The way that you sometimes know what someone is thinking from the expression on their face? Like that.”  
  
Snape only looked at him in what might have been shock or wonder a little longer, and then turned away. “I knew that I would end up like Blaise,” he whispered. “At the moment, I could think of no worse fate. Now I can.”  
  
Harry just sat there. He had no idea what Snape was thinking, and no idea how to comfort him if it was something distressing. The bond wasn’t even pulling at him to comfort Snape. It was just sitting there in the back of his head like a muted light seen from a distance, now and then throbbing a bit.  
  
Snape finally looked around at him, and said, “I still wish to be free of the bond. But—it can wait. You have a trial to plan today, and there are no character witnesses for Miss Parkinson coming forwards, are there?”  
  
Harry shook his head. “On the other hand, the charges against her don’t involve being a murderer and a Death Eater. So I don’t think we need as many of them.”  
  
Snape gave a faint, a very faint, smile. Harry  _had_ been joking, a little, but he hadn’t expected to see Snape acknowledge that. “Then I will leave you to plan her trial, and perhaps those of Mr. Goyle and the Malfoys, should you feel that they need you to do so.” He stood. “Free me when the trials are over.”  
  
“Are you sure?”   
  
Snape halted in the middle of taking a step towards the door, and looked at him in annoyance. “Why will you question me  _now_?”  
  
“Because I don’t want you changing your mind later,” Harry said simply. He thought he could put up with a lot from his vassals, and even people who weren’t his vassals but wanted his help anyway, if they would just stop changing their minds and thinking they knew better than him, who had the bond telling him what to do. He could do this, he  _could_ , but only if he had some immunity from people having new desires every thirty seconds.  
  
Snape paused, then inclined his head. “I will not change my mind. In the meantime, I think it wise to contact the Aurors and tell them that Mr. Zabini should not stay here. He is not your vassal anymore, so they only placed him here for the sake of convenience. He will be better off in a holding cell.”  
  
Harry sighed. “You’re right.” He didn’t want to think of yet another task he had to plan, but on the other hand, he suspected the labor would seem light next to the work of getting ready to release another vassal from the bond.  
  
“ _I_ will do that, Potter,” Snape said, in a sharp, rustling voice, and left the room before Harry could do more than look up in surprise.  
  
Harry sat slowly back, a smile working its way across his mouth in spite of what had happened in the last few days. It seemed that Blaise’s attack on Snape to take away his wand would result in some good things after all.  
  
 _Severus. His name is still Severus._


	49. Pansy Parkinson

“Are you ready?”  
  
Pansy had been trying to calm her bubbling anxiety, but she directed it now into a withering glance in Potter’s direction. “What the fuck do you think?” she hissed, low enough that she didn’t think Changes would hear them. “What the  _fuck_ do you think? I would rather have this trial over with, of course.”  
  
Potter just grinned at her. Yesterday, when he had finally come downstairs from his decadent lie-in, Pansy had thought he was going to be anxious himself, and making her anxiety worse by the way he reacted, but instead, he had boiling over with helpfulness and cheerfulness, and some ideas that might actually make the trial easier.  
  
“Of course you would,” Potter said, and touched her right arm, above the shield mark. “But that doesn’t actually have much to do with whether you’re ready.”  
  
“I hate you,” Pansy said, and hit his hand away.  
  
She felt a stir behind her, and turned around, ready with a glare for Greg. He ought to know that she wouldn’t really hurt Potter, and she had always been able to glare him into shutting up or sitting down when they were students at Hogwarts.  
  
Instead, she met Professor Snape’s dark scowl. He turned from her almost at once, but Pansy had seen enough that she thought she might understand why Potter’s mood had improved so dramatically. Her eyes went from Professor Snape back to their Lord, and she nodded. Yes, Professor Snape stood closer to Potter than he had before. He had also adjusted his stance so that he looked more ready to strike if someone tried to assault Potter.  
  
“If you’re done analyzing us,” said Potter, his voice so warm and friendly that Pansy smiled back before she thought about it, and then wanted to hit herself, “do you think you can answer my question?”  
  
Pansy sniffed a little. “I assume that you don’t have any character witnesses to bring in for me, since that was the first thing you told me yesterday.”  
  
“Oh, we do have one,” Potter said, and instead of speaking, led her gaze to Professor Snape like the irritating little git he was.  
  
Pansy gave a breathless little laugh, but didn’t doubt much. It was the sort of thing that Potter would come up with—Potter, who had brought a portrait of the Headmaster Professor Snape had killed to testify for the professor himself. “What do you mean? Why would they accept his testimony? They just got done trying  _him_.”  
  
“And it’s now acknowledged that he’s a war hero, who did what he did at tremendous cost and under tremendous stress, and who is only being kept under house arrest to ease the bruised sensibilities of the wizarding world,” Potter muttered.  
  
That startled another laugh out of Pansy. “What?” There was no way that Potter had come up with those words himself.  
  
“You didn’t read the  _Prophet_ this morning, did you?” Potter’s eye glinted, and Pansy shook her head back. Frankly, she hadn’t wanted to know what they were saying about her, if anything at all. “Well. You can rest assured that I understand your modesty and your desire to represent yourself well. And that I fully support you in all that you do.” He put a hand in the middle of Pansy’s back to escort her into the trial, and added softly into her ear, “I don’t think that you need much more support than the claims of two war heroes.”  
  
Pansy only nodded, although she didn’t think Potter would be able to give her much support himself. Everyone knew  _he_ had been far away from the school, and if he said what Pansy had told him, well, that was just what she had told him.  
  
They entered into what seemed to be a fuller court than before, and the first people that Pansy’s eyes fell on, of course, were the Boot family. Terry stood in front of Lewis, his brother who had cursed her in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, but both of them had stares like poison.  
  
“Revenge,” Terry mouthed at her as they went past.  
  
Pansy put her head up and felt the shield mark heat. Potter had seen them as well, she knew, and he would protect her. He had promised that she would be tried for what she had done to Terry, which she honestly didn’t even remember doing, but it had to be a fair trial. Not revenge just because someone said so.  
  
Maybe she would receive the same sentence that her Lord and Professor Snape had. The year of house arrest, and the restrictions on her wand.  
  
But seeing the glares that came her way from the Boot family, she knew they would push for more than that. Azkaban. Snapping her wand. The Kiss.  
  
All she could do was trust in the protection of her Lord, and the bond, and her own quick mind.   
  
And Professor Snape, for all the good that would do her. She couldn’t help giving him a jaundiced look over her shoulder. Why had he changed his mind to decide that he suddenly wanted to be a faithful vassal? Was he going to change it back again? Would he abandon her the moment he had another disagreement with Potter, or if her trial lasted more than one day and he got bored?  
  
Professor Snape’s eyes met hers, as though he had done nothing since they entered the court but wait for her to look at him. He mouthed a single word, much like the one that Terry had mouthed at her. “Blaise,” he said, and then swept off to a chair that had been set up for him on the opposite side of the court, with Potter, who squeezed Pansy’s arm once before he left her. The people who hadn’t been tried yet, including Greg and Draco, sat behind Pansy on the nearest side of the courtroom to the door.  
  
And Pansy thought of the way that Blaise had acted, hardly more madly than Professor Snape, and what example that behavior might hold for someone watching it from the outside—someone sane—and had to hide a smile as she, too, took her seat.  
  
*  
  
Draco felt quiet.  
  
It was a weird quietness. It felt as though silence had moved into the middle of his chest and nested there, the way that some stranger Dark creatures had nested in corners of the Manor when they escaped from a shipment of Potions ingredients his father had received, and Draco wouldn’t get rid of it any time soon.  
  
Sometimes he could see Harry looking at him, and then he would turn away again. He probably felt Draco’s emotions through the bond, and wondered what they were all about. But Draco wasn’t going to confront him, not when he had so much to do with arranging Pansy’s defense, and Professor Snape’s, and battling Blaise.  
  
 _Blaise…what’s going to happen to him now that he’s not part of the bond anymore? Will he even get a trial?_  
  
But Draco dismissed that notion with a shake of his head. Blaise had been involved in the trials from the way he spoke up, even if he had been free of the bond by then, and he had been one of Harry’s vassals for a little while. That would ensure continued interest in him, and probably Blaise would do all he could to take advantage of that interest.  
  
But what  _Draco_ had to be concerned with was his upcoming part in the trials, and the decisions he had to make in the privacy of his own silence.  
  
Whether he wanted to continue in the bond after the trials were done—assuming he was still free then and able to continue in the bond, not minus a soul or a wand or memories. Criminals sometimes got  _Obliviated_ and sent elsewhere, if their crimes were severe enough. Draco pictured himself wandering Muggle streets, and shuddered.  
  
How and why he was going to change himself so that he was different from his father and other Malfoys, the way he had already decided he would.  
  
What he was going to do about the change from Potter to Harry, the deepening of the silence he felt when he looked at his Lord, and what it all meant.  
  
For now, he stayed silent, and listened to Changes present her position: that Pansy had been ordered by the Carrows and others in Hogwarts to torture other students, that in fact some students who weren’t Slytherins had done the same thing to stay alive, and that trying to escape to the Room of Hidden Things wouldn’t have done any good, since none of the students there were Slytherins and the ones hiding wouldn’t have admitted her, wouldn’t have trusted her. It sounded like a good line of argument to Draco.  
  
 _Of course it does. It’s the one that I’m going to have to rely on to save my hide, too._  
  
Draco grimaced and shifted a little, and received an immediate look from Harry in turn. Draco settled back, more content than he could say, even if it was for ridiculous reasons. That showed that Harry was always aware of his vassals when they needed him and would try to reassure them.  
  
Of course, no one else in the bond except Greg would be reassured by a mere glance, but Draco was trying not to let that bother him.  
  
And no one else in the bond could pick up on what he was feeling, either, unless he was foolish enough to display it. Draco tilted his head back and tried to let his feelings course through him and melt away some of the silence. Unless something went badly wrong at Pansy’s trial, something that would mean they had to extend it, it would only be a day or two until Draco had to speak in his own defense. They might put Greg’s trial first, so that his trial and his parents’ would follow each other. It would make for more drama and better headlines.  
  
Draco had seen the looks that Ollondors sent him, if no one else had. He was sure that she disliked him, or maybe just disliked that there was a Malfoy bonded to the Boy-Who-Lived, and she would make the trials as hard as she could for his family.  
  
He, in the meantime, would do what he could to ride out his own feelings, and stand as ready as he could be when the moment came to defend himself.  
  
*  
  
“Harry Potter.”  
  
When he was called as a witness, of course, the Wizengamot member who did it wasn’t going to call his title. Harry thought that at first, and then rolled his eyes as he moved towards the center of the courtroom. There was a time when he would have been bloody glad of that.  
  
And that time had only been a week ago. Two weeks ago? Harry found it hard to pin down the moment when his feelings towards the bond had begun to change, although having to relinquish a vassal had sure been a lot harder than he thought.  
  
He took his place in front of the Wizengamot, in the center of the room, which put him in front of Ollondors. Jenkyns had had to move from that center—probably because his little power games had failed—and Harry wondered if the man would manage to melt Harry’s face with his scowl from the side. Well, at least it would be only one eye that melted, if he did, Harry thought, and smiled at Ollondors.  
  
“Can you explain to us exactly why Miss Pansy Parkinson should not be tried for her crimes?” Ollondors’s voice was sharp and pious, and Harry caught on. No one had actually said that Pansy shouldn’t be tried for her crimes. That was just an exaggeration that people like Jenkyns would claim Harry wanted. Ollondors was giving him the chance to fight back from a strong position, one that would make him look good.  
  
“She absolutely should be tried,” Harry said, and sure enough, a surprised little ripple ran through some of the people in the room, including the Boots.  _Idiots._  “I just think the trial should be fair, the way it was for me and Professor Severus Snape.”  
  
Ollondors stared at him as if surprised that he would call those trials fair, but Harry looked back with an impassive face. He didn’t think that he would be able to maintain it if they threatened Pansy too badly, but he would try as long as he could. Pansy didn’t deserve to be humiliated, threatened, or blackmailed.  
  
Ollondors finally cleared her throat and said, “But you had good motives for your actions.”  
  
“Even when it came to the way I cursed and impersonated Death Eaters?” Harry smiled and shook his head when Ollondors frowned. His trial was over now. They could enforce the punishment he had earned, but they couldn’t go back and say they had made a mistake because he had mentioned one of the crimes he was tried for casually. “Pansy might not have had the best motives, either. But she was trying to survive. If she had refused a direct order from the Carrows to curse someone, then she would probably have been killed. And then we wouldn’t be here today, but that doesn’t mean that anyone in the Boot family would have escaped being cursed.”  
  
“Trying to survive isn’t  _enough!_ ” howled Terry, down the courtroom. “She should have stood up to them!”  
  
Harry turned around, and let his eyes go cold. He had really hoped that he wouldn’t have to do this, but on the other hand, he had realized from the beginning that that was most likely a forlorn hope. “And did you?”  
  
“What?” Terry shook his head as though someone had stuffed his ears with wax.  
  
“Did you stand up to them?” Harry asked, calmly, politely. “Did they ask you to do something, to curse another student, to lick their boots, to call Muggleborns Mudbloods? Did you resist it? Or not?”  
  
Terry fell back a step. Really, that was as good as an answer; Harry could hear the murmur that traveled around the room like wildfire. But he kept on staring at Terry, who had his fists clenched.  
  
“I never  _rejoiced_ in it,” Terry said. “Because I’m not a Slytherin. I’m not like  _her_.” He flung one hand at Pansy as though he was trying to push her off a cliff.  
  
Pansy kept her face still. Harry was sure that he was the only one who realized how close she was hovering to the edge of anger and fear, and he could only know that because the bond was shooting rapid little arrows of those feelings up his shield mark.  
  
“Fine,” Harry said. “You’re not a Slytherin. But how can you know what she felt? How do you know that every single time she did something, it was because she loved torture and wasn’t simply trying to survive?”  
  
“That’s not a pure enough motive, I said,” Terry said, and his voice went straight back to the howl, while his brother looked around him. “She didn’t have the  _right_ —”  
  
“I am the one conducting this trial,” said Ollondors, in a freezing voice that made Terry shut up immediately. Harry wasn’t sure if it would have made  _him_ shut up in the same way, but he was just as glad not to test it. “I will ask the questions.” She turned back to Harry. “You are sure that she did it because she was trying to survive?”  
  
“Why don’t you ask her?” Harry tilted his head towards Pansy. She had spoken in her own defense, but not much, mostly only in response for a few direct questions.  
  
Pansy gaped at him, or it felt like she did, but by the time Harry glanced at her, along with Ollondors, she had smoothed her face out.  
  
Ollondors nodded. “I think I will. Well, Miss Parkinson. Did you curse young Mr. Boot, and other students, out of sheer love of torture?”  
  
It took Pansy longer than Harry would have thought it would to clear her throat and begin to speak, but she sounded calm and clear and normal when she managed it. “No. I did not. I did it because I was being ordered to, and I’d seen what the Carrows did to people who didn’t obey their orders.”  
  
“What did they do?” Ollondors sounded as if she really wanted to know.  
  
Pansy hesitated and glanced at Harry. Harry nodded subtly at her. He didn’t think she needed to be afraid of telling Ollondors the truth.  
  
Unfortunately, Terry saw the nod, and interrupted. “He’s controlling her! He’s a Lord, of course he is! He’s suggesting the answers to her!”  
  
Harry opened his mouth to speak, although he wasn’t sure what he would have said, and caught Changes’s eye. She had such a savage frown that Harry shut his mouth. He was sure that he still needed to respond, though. A lot of the Wizengamot members were so stupid that they would think him staying silent was the same as a confession.  
  
“That’s not true.”  
  
Pansy’s voice was soft, but it was shaking. Harry turned to stare at her. The arrows of emotion darting up his shield mark had changed. Now she sounded as though she wanted to rip someone’s face off.  
  
“That’s not true,” Pansy continued, “and to show that I’m telling the truth and  _end_ all this stupid nonsense about someone doubting my motives, I demand my right to drink Veritaserum.”  
  
*  
  
Pansy could hear the gasps that traveled all over the courtroom after she said that. At least some of them were gasps of outrage, she thought, or she reckoned that they would be.  
  
She didn’t care. She put her head up and let them gape and stare at her.  
  
The strongest twinge traveled up her right arm, from the bond that she shared with her Lord. Pansy looked back at him and found him staring at her as though everyone else had ceased to exist. She understood the silent message behind those eyes. Was she  _sure_ about this? Did she really want to do it?  
  
Pansy nodded firmly back to him, and proceeded to ignore everything else until Ollondors restored some sort of order to the courtroom by standing up and waving her hands around. Then she sat back down and said, “If Miss Parkinson demands to drink Veritaserum, who are we to disoblige her?”  
  
Someone went out to get the Veritaserum, while Changes whispered frantically with Potter and he shook his head and said something back that made the barrister’s mouth tighten. At least she stepped away from the witnesses’ podium and sighed heavily. Pansy was just as glad to not have another enemy to fight.  
  
She stood there until the messenger came back with the Veritaserum and carried it up to her, looking at her with something suspiciously like awe. Well, maybe this person had been a Slytherin, or on trial at some point, and couldn’t imagine doing what she did. Pansy gave her a superior smile back, and took the stopper out.  
  
“Three drops only!” Ollondors called.  
  
Pansy didn’t roll her eyes, but only because she didn’t want to give the wrong impression, now that she had got what she wanted. What pure-blood child of her generation, growing up with stories of the war and the way their parents had (mostly) been arrested after the war, wouldn’t know how much Veritaserum you were supposed to take?  
  
But she also didn’t want to get into a debate in front of the Wizengamot, so she swallowed obediently, barely placing the drops on her tongue, and holding her mouth open and the vial high so that everyone could see how it was done.  
  
The effect was immediate. Pansy felt as though someone had driven a nail through the part of her brain that could lie. The nail went all the way through her body, and pinned her feet to the floor, too. She swayed in place for a moment, linked and locked around the unyielding pole. She thought she handed the vial back to the messenger, but she barely knew. The muscles of her face felt strange, different, slack. She stood there, and her jaw gaped.  
  
“Miss Parkinson?” Ollondors’s voice came from far away.  
  
Pansy looked up slowly. She felt and heard the murmurs traveling around the courtroom still, but if anything, they seemed more subdued now. Perhaps they had realized, after one look at her face, that there was no way anyone would be able to fake being under Veritaserum.  
  
“Tell us why you cast the torture curse at Terry Boot.” Ollondors.  
  
Pansy began to speak, the words rolling down her tongue like dribbles of iron from the nail. “I don’t remember him, exactly. But I know that I cursed all the people I did because I was afraid.” She paused, trying to coax the next words down her tongue, and did it just in time, before she thought Ollondors would have asked another question. “I was afraid that I would be tortured. The Carrows tortured people who fought back. Some of them, some of them they killed.”  
  
The murmurs sounded like a forest fire this time. Pansy thought she could distantly hear the protests of someone, probably Boot, but it was so far away and unimportant next to the question that Ollondors flung at her then. “Why couldn’t you fight back and take your chances? Why was committing torture better than suffering from it?”  
  
Pansy laughed, or she thought she did. It was hard to make a sound like that when her tongue would barely move. “Because I’m a bloody Slytherin. I’m a coward. I wanted to survive. There was the chance I could.” She looked around the courtroom, although she could only move her eyes and not her head at the moment. “How many people here were brave enough to fight when the Death Eaters took over the Ministry? How many of them were under the Imperius Curse, and how many of them tortured people without it? I tortured people without it.”  
  
There was a shuffling then. Pansy was a little amazed that she’d been able to say that much, and ask a question of her own when she was under Veritaserum. She supposed that was her anger, burning some of the mist of the potion off.  
  
“There was a room where lots of us hid!” said Boot angrily from the side. “You could have gone there. Why didn’t you?”  
  
“Because of Daphne.”  
  
There was a general murmur of confusion, but Pansy could turn her head a little now. Boot’s question had given her freedom. She saw his face. He looked as puzzled as the rest, but not his brother. He was hanging behind Terry and looking down. He understood. He knew.  
  
“Explain what that means,” said Ollondors quietly, with enough support in her voice that Pansy trusted her. “What does he mean?”  
  
“Daphne followed one of the Hufflepuffs who went to the hidden room,” Pansy whispered. The words rolling down her tongue felt like drops of oil now, still disgusting and heavy, but not as heavy as they had once been. “She knew they were hiding there. She wanted to be safe. She told them that she wanted to come in and be safe. They said they couldn’t allow any Slytherins in because a Slytherin might betray them. And anyway, someday they would have to fight a battle, when Harry Potter came back, and she couldn’t join them if she wouldn’t fight. She came back to the common room crying, and she told me what happened. So I didn’t run. Because there was no escape.”  
  
Silence. Well, someone was crying. Pansy thought it was Boot’s brother. She honestly couldn’t bring herself to care much.  
  
Then Ollondors stood up and looked around. “Any more questions?”  
  
There were none. Someone came forwards with the antidote to the Veritaserum, and Pansy swallowed it without even looking to see who they were. She gripped the front of the prisoner’s box as the sensation of the antidote swept through her, dissolving the nail through her tongue and brain and making it easier to think and speak again.  
  
But that had been the truth. All of it. Including the admission that she was a coward.  
  
Now they had to deal with the truth.  
  
Maybe because she wasn’t a Marked Death Eater, maybe because a lot of people here had never heard her name except as the daughter of her father, the vote was swift. She had a house arrest of six months, to be extended to a year if she was freed of her bond to Lord Potter in the meantime, and one month of monitoring charms on her wand.  
  
Pansy bowed her head as she was escorted back to her seat. She caught one glimpse of her Lord’s face, and the incandescent relief there.  
  
And she saw the fear and hatred on the faces of the Boots. Well, she could not heal all the wounds of the war, and her apologies and her atonement would be disdained likewise, since they came from a slimy Slytherin.  
  
She sat down and turned her back on them in silence, to rejoice in her own future.


	50. Coming to an Understanding

“You know that you’re going to be next, Greg.”  
  
Greg leaned against the wall and looked around the room. He didn’t think there were many threats here. His Lord had already showed that he controlled the fires and the wards and the walls of Grimmauld Place. That was good. It meant there was one less set of threats that Greg had to protect him from, so he could focus on the ones that would hurt his Lord more.  
  
But he always had to check, just in case.  
  
“Greg? Did you hear what I said?” Lord Potter leaned forwards from his chair, a faint frown on his face that made Greg snap to attention. “They sent me a letter that said your trial is on Monday.”  
  
Greg turned back and nodded. “I’m sorry, my Lord. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”  
  
“I’m not so much worried about that,” Lord Potter said. “But your defense strategy is going to be harder to plan.” His eyes flickered to the side. Greg was puzzled for a moment, and then figured out what he was looking at.  
  
“Are you talking about this, my Lord?” Greg pulled back the sleeve on his left arm so that his Dark Mark showed. Lord Potter flinched as though Greg had thrown pepper in his face, like one of his cousins had done to Greg once. Greg reminded himself to remember that Lord Potter was sensitive to the Dark Mark like that.  
  
“Yes,” said Lord Potter, after a moment. “I didn’t…you know it will make the trial harder, because you were a Marked Death Eater.”  
  
Greg waited, for something more, and then finally went on when he realized that Lord Potter expected him to be upset, or something, about that particular comment. “I know it will make it harder, my Lord. But you’ll fight for me.”  
  
This time, his Lord was the one who waited, and finally shook his head and spoke when he seemed to realize that Greg didn’t see anything more he needed to say. Well, he  _didn’t._ “It’s going to be hard. You might have to testify. We won’t have as many witnesses as we did for Professor Snape. It might…it might come to you having to give up your wand for a long time, if you don’t go to Azkaban.”  
  
Greg felt bliss melt across his mind. So that was why his Lord was looking at him with those dark, desolate eyes lately. He hadn’t been about to end the bond and throw Greg out, the way Greg had assumed. He just thought his trial would be hard.  
  
“I don’t care, my Lord,” said Greg, and folded his arms and bowed his head. It was a gesture of submission, and he didn’t care if his Lord didn’t know it. It was for him, for himself. “You’ll fight for me. That’s what you do. You’ll fight for me, and you win.”  
  
“But it’ll be hard—”  
  
“I trust you,” Greg interrupted. Honestly, it was the only thing that needed to be said.  
  
Lord Potter frowned at the fire. Then he tugged at his hair. Greg didn’t say anything about that. It wasn’t his duty to provide personal grooming advice to his Lord. And his Lord might need it, but he would benefit more from the spells and other weapons that Greg had in his arsenal.  
  
“Then I suppose there’s nothing more to say,” Lord Potter murmured. “If you trust me so absolutely.” Greg didn’t say anything, but he was glad that his Lord had finally seen sense. Then his Lord turned towards him. “You would tell me if you ever wanted to be released from the bond?”  
  
“You won’t do that,” Greg said, and his pulse was so fast he thought he was going to faint like some silly first-year. “You gave me your word.”  
  
“I did, of course,” Lord Potter said. “But that wouldn’t mean anything if  _you_ wanted to be free.”  
  
Greg relaxed as much as he could when his Lord had just given him a scare like that. It wasn’t as bad as having an assassin lunge out of the shadows, but it was nearly as bad. “I won’t change my mind.”  
  
“You’re sure?” His Lord seemed to have decided that he could Legilimize Greg just by leaning forwards and looking in his eyes. But Greg knew better than that. His Lord wasn’t Professor Snape. Besides, he could learn everything he needed to know about Greg’s state of mind and emotions just by listening to the bond, so that was the way he would do it. Lord Potter was  _efficient_.  
  
“I’m sure,” said Greg, and looked one more time around the room for assassins before he took up his guard position in front of the door again. But then someone knocked on that door. Greg turned around and cocked his first.  
  
” _Greg_ ,” said Lord Potter, sounding annoyed. “Very few people could get through the wards.”  
  
“But Blaise was in this house,” said Greg, and gave Lord Potter a look that he hoped was kind. His mum had always said that he wasn’t good at expressing kindness, but then, he’d been in Slytherin and one of Draco’s brutes. He’d never needed to be. “So someone else could be in this house to threaten you, too.”  
  
Lord Potter opened his mouth, and then closed it again and shook his head without saying anything. He was obviously so impressed by Greg’s superior logic that he couldn’t say anything. Well, that was one of the first times that Greg had ever impressed anyone with his logic, so he was smiling when he opened the door.  
  
Draco stood there, one hand raised as though he was going to knock again. He looked at Greg, and Greg looked at him.  
  
Draco smiled a little. Greg knew that smile. Draco was going to order him to do something, and Greg would do it.  
  
But he had a Lord now, and that meant he couldn’t do it. So he stood there, and felt the shield mark sparking on his arm, and got ready to hit Draco if he had to. He didn’t really want to, but then, he didn’t want Draco to threaten his Lord, either. So things worked out.  
  
Then Lord Potter said in a changed voice, “Draco?” And he sighed something that could have been long and complicated, except it sounded like all the long and complicated stuff was compressed in a small area instead, and said, “Let him in, Greg.”  
  
Greg stepped aside. He was glad that he hadn’t had to beat Draco up. Draco wasn’t his Lord, but he used to be something like it. So Greg was glad that things had worked out this way instead.  
  
Lord Potter had his chin on one fist, and was looking at Draco as though he needed something from him. Greg glanced back and forth between them, ready to go fetch anything they needed, even if it was just tea or something.  
  
Then Lord Potter made his decision, and glanced at Greg. “Will you stand guard outside the door, Greg?” he asked. “I need to talk to Draco alone.”  
  
Greg didn’t ask if Lord Potter was sure. Draco was still in the bond, so Lord Potter would feel it if Draco was ready to attack him.  
  
 _And he can stop him._ Greg was sure of that. He had stopped Blaise, and Blaise was braver than Draco.  
  
“Of course,” he murmured, and stepped outside and shut the door, making sure that it was firmly closed behind him. If this had to be a private conversation, then he wouldn’t let anyone else in, no matter how much they might need something. They weren’t in the courtroom right now, anyway, so there weren’t that many people who would need his Lord.  
  
Except him. Greg would always need his Lord.  
  
But he had his promise that his Lord wouldn’t send him away. Greg relaxed against the door, and kept vigilant watch up and down the corridor.  
  
*  
  
“What is it?”  
  
That particular question, in a voice so soft and warm, almost broke Draco. He had to swallow back a peculiar stinging around his eyes, and answer as honestly as he could.  
  
“It’s not—not something about my parents or changing the deal that you and my father have, if that’s what you think,” he said, after coughing harshly for a moment. “I just want you to know that. I’ve come here for a different reason.”  
  
“Okay,” Harry said. He had lounged back in the chair once Draco spoke those first words, and for a second, Draco thought he might have imagined the concern in his voice. Then he saw Harry’s face, and relaxed all in a rush.  
  
 _Nothing like that. He’s glad that I don’t have something to say about my parents. He was worried that was it._  
  
Draco sat up a little as the cool, soothing weight of relief replaced a few of the burdens he was carrying, and nodded at Harry. “I came here because I wanted to speak to you about—about the past.”  
  
“You don’t need to apologize to me for what you did during the war.” Harry’s voice and eyes were both shadowed. “We all did things we aren’t proud of.” He glanced at Draco. Puzzled, Draco looked down, and realized that Harry’s gaze centered on his chest.  
  
“What—oh, that spell.” Draco shivered. He had to admit that his memories of that were hazy, but scary.  
  
“I had no right to do that.” Harry crossed his arms and shivered in turn. “Without knowing what I did, without knowing whether there was a chance that I was going to kill you—”  
  
“Who was the one who said that we weren’t going to apologize for things that happened during the war?” Draco risked a smile. “I don’t need you doing it to me, either. Besides, I was going to use an Unforgivable on you when you defended yourself with that spell. I think we should both let it go, insofar as we can.”  
  
Harry paused as though he wanted to argue about it, and then seemed to recognize the inherent ridiculous of that. He snorted a little and nodded. “Fair’s fair, then. What did you want to discuss?”  
  
“I changed my mind about the things my father wants.” Draco knew it wasn’t a very elegant beginning—probably a confusing one, from the slow blinks Harry was giving him—but he needed to start somewhere, and defining himself in opposition to his father’s ideals was how he had first learned what he wanted, himself. “The things he stands for, pure-blood ideals and a family above all else and getting ahead in the Ministry through political power. I changed my mind about wanting that.” He gripped the arms of the chair, his nervousness ticking higher as Harry said nothing. He really needed some support, here.  
  
“How much of that is just because of the bond? And the trial?”  
  
“I don’t know how much is because of the bond,” Draco said. “Honestly. The—the way it affects my thoughts, I don’t know much about. I thought you might know more about it than I did. Or maybe Professor Snape, since I think he attacked the bond from his side to provide protection for his mind.”  
  
“He did.” Harry took off his glasses as though they needed scrubbing, and treated Draco to a vision of his eyes without them. Draco would never have thought a myopic green gaze could be so beautiful. He cleared his throat and tried to keep from showing how they affected him. “But you know that it won’t be easy for you to trick or bribe people in the Ministry after this trial. Are you saying that you want different things than your father just because of that?”  
  
Draco shook his head firmly. “The way you stand up for us in the courtroom is what inspired me. I want someone to protect me like that.”  
  
Harry’s jaw tightened, and his gaze turned to the door this time. Also this time, Draco was faster at seeing what he was about. “Not the way Greg does,” he added hastily. “I don’t want to be ordered around and be your bodyguard.”  
  
“Good.” Now Harry ran his hand through his hair, which had absolutely no effect on the general state of it. “One of those people I have to handle so carefully is all I can stand.” He hesitated, then added, “What would be different about this from the way your parents protected you?”  
  
“Because they care about me as their son, but also because I’m the Malfoy heir,” Draco said. He thought of his father in the holding cell, giving the blood-ghost his blood to save Draco, so that their family wouldn’t die out. “I can’t separate those things. They’re always both there. And I know that Father will expect me to keep up the traditions if he goes to Azkaban and I don’t.”  
  
“That’s probably what’s going to happen.”  
  
Draco met Harry’s eyes once, then turned them away. “I know,” he whispered, and then tried to raise his voice and deepen the sound of it, because twinges of warmth came through his shield mark, and he didn’t want Harry just feeling sorry for him. “I know, okay? But I don’t want to be just the vessel of my father’s ambitions anymore. I want a life of my own.”  
  
“I don’t think the bond can give you that.”  
  
Draco winced and stared down at his hands, closed together in the rich leather of the chair arm. This was kind of humiliating to admit. At least he knew that Harry wouldn’t respond to it with the roars of laughter that a lot of other people would. “I want—my parents shaped—my parents still made me want some kind of protection. I can’t be on my own, not right away. I have so many things to learn. I don’t want what my father wants for me, but what does that leave? What am I going to do if not work in politics or sit in the Manor and watch the Galleons accumulate in our vaults? I need to learn about the Light.”  
  
“Well, okay,” Harry said, sounding baffled now. “But I don’t know if I even know what that is, except the opposite to Dark Arts and Dark magical creatures like the Dementors. Do you want me to show you how to use a Patronus?”  
  
“No,” Draco said, and looked up. “I think you care about me just because I’m Draco. And you care about me because you think I could be an okay person. I mean, by your standards, not just by any standards. Protect me for a while. Teach me. Please?”  
  
“Draco…”  
  
The softness, the gentleness, in the way Harry said his name was dangerous. Draco hurried past it as quickly as he could. “I know you can’t do it forever, and someday I’ll have to stand on my own. But just for now, could you do it?”  
  
Harry frowned a little, and the shield mark on Draco’s arm spread gentle warmth along his skin, as if it was cradled in a Healer’s hands. “So you want to use the bond as a crutch for a little while, until you’re ready to be independent?”  
  
Draco nodded immediately. “I don’t want to be like Greg. I’m not like that.” He shuddered a little, at the thought of spending every day for the rest of his life at the mercy of someone else. “But I haven’t done that great making decisions on my own either, and I’m tired of my parents doing it when I know they just want me to do certain things. And I don’t want to use the bond for a political advantage like Pansy does. I don’t know what kind of political advantage I would even want.”  
  
Harry smiled. “So you want to be a vassal for a little while, but not forever, and see where that leads you.”  
  
“Right.” Draco met his eyes and took a gamble. “Just like the way you probably want to be a Lord for a little while, but not forever.”  
  
Harry hesitated as though Draco had offered to pour cold water down his back instead of giving him a valuable insight. Draco held back his immediate angry reaction at the thought that Harry might reject him. They still had their past to deal with, and, well, Harry had never shown a tendency to jump at Draco’s valuable insights before.  
  
“It would be hard to give up being a Lord, after having the bond,” Harry mumbled.  
  
Draco snorted, and then shook his head and elaborated when Harry stared at him in surprise. “But once you were free of the bond, you would probably wonder why you wanted to keep it. If Professor Snape could come up with a way to free his mind of the bond, can’t you do the same thing? You’re the one who’s in the center of it, and you can feel the way it affects everyone’s mind.” He added, when Harry stared at him as if he was speaking a language from the other side of the world, “You already gained control of it in a way that Pansy and maybe your friends thought you could. This shouldn’t be that much more difficult.”  
  
“This is like asking me to take away the ocean from an island I’m standing on,” Harry said, and rapped his fingers on his leg. “Not only is it impossible to do for sure, but if I do it, then the island isn’t an island anymore.”  
  
“I still think you could do it,” Draco said, and refused to flinch from the glare that Harry sent him. “You just need to have the will. And I think you do. You may not remember how disgusted you were when you first became our Lord now, but I do.”  
  
“I remember it,” Harry corrected him. “But I’m remembering it without feeling it, you know? I  _know_ that my vassals need me.”  
  
Draco snorted. “It sounds to me like we’re  _both_ using this bond as a crutch.”  
  
Harry sat up straight and glared at him. Draco flinched a little, because the shield mark on his arm was almost vibrating, as though a bee had got down inside it and was zooming back and forth within the triangular shape.  
  
Then Harry sighed and relaxed, letting his head fall back against the chair. “You may be right. Anyway, I know that I won’t be a Lord to anyone except Greg forever. Severus wants out of it when the trials are done. I can’t imagine that Pansy will want to have it forever, although it may be convenient to make people underestimate her when she starts being active in politics.” He looked at Draco again, a long, slow look that Draco squirmed under. “And here you come, with your vague requests for teaching.”  
  
“Didn’t you ever want to teach me a lesson?” Draco knew he sounded a little desperate. He wiped the sweat off his brow and tried to continue in a calmer tone. “Make me pay for something I did in school?”  
  
“Well, yeah,” said Harry, folding his arms and turning to stare into the fire. “But that wasn’t about teaching you to be a better person. It was about teaching you to leave me the fuck alone.”  
  
Draco winced. This wasn’t going so well. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up the past…  
  
But it lingered with them, over them, as inescapable as the bond. Draco would have to talk about it sooner or later.  
  
“I want to know how you’re so effortless with it all, you know,” he mumbled to Harry, not much caring if he paid attention right now or not. “How did you decide to just sacrifice your life for everyone? And stand up to the Dark Lord? I couldn’t have done that if my life depended on it. Maybe not even if my parents’ lives depended on it. But you did it like it was easy.”  
  
Harry turned and stared at him. “You think that was  _easy_?” he said, and there was something almost like a gasp under the words. “It was the hardest day of my fucking life, you berk!”  
  
Draco had to laugh despite himself. “Here we are arguing, and the bond isn’t unhappy with us. I suppose that means you can interact like normal people with your vassals once in a while?”  
  
Harry paused and blinked. Then he said, “Okay, fine, but that doesn’t mean I have anything to teach you.”  
  
“I want—I want to be independent, and feel fine that I am,” Draco said. “I want to not care so much about what other Slytherins and the public think. I want to be able to walk around freely and not have anybody stare at me.”  
  
That got him a look so long that Draco squirmed under it. “ _Really_?” Harry said, and he drawled it in a way that he could only have learned from Draco himself.  
  
“Well, all right,” Draco said. “People staring at me some of the time would be okay. But not for the reasons they are now.”  
  
Harry frowned. “Fine. But I don’t know how I could really get you a good public reputation, and that’s what you’re asking for.”  
  
“Let me stay your vassal for a little while,” Draco said, very quietly. “And talk to you about things, and maybe you can teach me the Patronus Charm. But I don’t want—I don’t want you to just walk away from me.”  
  
Harry lifted his arm and traced the shield mark with one finger. “Do you know how hard walking away from Zabini was? And  _he_ was actively trying to kill me.”  
  
“I did punch you once.”  
  
“And yank on my broom, and dress up as a Dementor and all the rest of it, yeah, I know.” Harry waved a hand, but he was looking at Draco more thoughtfully than he had been, and Draco relaxed a little. “But just staying with me and talking is something I think I can do. It’ll mean putting up with Ron and Hermione.”  
  
“Oh, but you do that so well,” Draco said, and waved his hand. “I’m sure that your ability won’t desert you in the next little while.”  
  
“I meant you need to put up with them.”  
  
“Teach me that, and I’ll say that you’re a better educator than Professor Snape.” Draco smiled blindingly at him. “You can teach me anything, if you can teach me that.”  
  
Harry lowered his head into his hands. Draco stiffened, thinking he might have gone too far, but reassured himself when he could feel a faint warmth coming through the shield mark. Sure enough, Harry’s shoulders were quivering, and he lifted his head and shook it at Draco with a faint smile.   
  
“Yes, you win,” he said. “At least your sense of humor can counterbalance Pansy’s, if she gets out of hand.”  
  
“There’s our first bargain,” Draco immediately said. “You teach me to put up with Weasley and Granger, I teach you how to put up with my fellow Slytherins.”  
  
Harry hesitated only once before he leaned across the distance between their chairs. “Agreed.”  
  
Draco solemnly took his hand, and shook it, trying not to think about other hands, and missed chances. That was the past. This was the present.  
  
 _And,_ he thought, feeling the warm tightness in his stomach when Harry smiled at him,  _possibly my future._


	51. Gregory Goyle

“This is the moment that we cannot refuse.”  
  
Harry started straight ahead, wondering if it comforted Snape to hear his own voice when he talked like that. Of course Harry knew that they couldn’t just waltz past this trial and have everything be fine. They had to actually go through it, and Greg hadn’t committed a bunch of wrong actions because he was secretly on their side. Harry would have to do what he could to save him without the character witnesses or the knowledge he’d had for Snape.  
  
“You might at least acknowledge me,” Snape hissed, at the same moment as the bond twinged so hard that Harry’s left hand flew to his right arm in self-defense. Apparently that was what the bond did when a vassal felt like their Lord was ignoring him.  
  
“I know that we have to get through it,” Harry said, and tried to make it sound nice and normal and pleasant. For the moment, the trial hadn’t begun, but he and Snape were both in witness seats not far from some hostile members of the Wizengamot, and Harry didn’t think it would do Greg any good if their enemies heard them arguing. “What else do you want me to say? I don’t think it’ll be easy, but I’ll still fight. For Greg.”  
  
Snape was silent long enough that Harry thought the acknowledgment was all he’d wanted and started to turn around again, but Snape reached out, shaking his head, and put a hand on his shoulder. “There have been incidents in the past when a Lord let a vassal of his go to prison, rather than put the others in danger,” he murmured.  
  
Harry listened, waited, and when it became clear that Snape had nothing more to say, Harry replied, “How nice for them.”  
  
The pressure of Snape’s hand grew heavier. “You have to realize that is what it may come to.”  
  
“You and Pansy have had your trials,” Harry said. “They can’t just reverse their decisions and put you in Azkaban even if they decide to put Greg there.”  
  
“If you fight too hard against the outcome of his trial, it might influence Draco’s.”  
  
Harry turned fully back around to stare at Snape again. “I should bloody well  _hope_ so,” he said, and saw some people looking around at them. Well, he didn’t care. He was going to express himself as loudly and as proudly as he could. “I should bloody well  _hope_ that it shows them I’m going to struggle like mad against any of my vassals going to prison, even if they are Death Eaters.”  
  
Snape’s fingers pressed down hard enough that Harry wondered why he’d bothered keeping knives around; it was clear he was capable of dicing leaves and tubers with his nails if he wanted. “I am saying,” Snape said, measuring his words with exquisite precision, the way Hermione did sometimes when she was angry, “that you might not be able to keep Draco out of prison if you protest too much about them sending Mr. Goyle there. They want to send a Death Eater there. They will not be satisfied without sending at least one.”  
  
“They can send Lucius Malfoy,” Harry pointed out. “And all the other Death Eaters that they’re presumably going to try once they’re done with us.” He admittedly hadn’t heard a lot about preparations for those trials, but then, he’d been cooped up in Grimmauld Place for days with other things to concentrate on.  
  
“Idiot child,” Snape said, and his voice became a vicious hiss. Harry entertained himself with visions of Snape speaking to Nagini at Death Eater meetings. “Do you want Draco free or not?”  
  
“I want them  _both_ free,” Harry began, wondering how Snape could have missed that. Then he paused. Something Snape had been hinting around about finally clicked into place in his head, with a noise like tumblers in a lock snapping. “Wait. Were you assuming that I would let Greg go to prison to save Draco? That I would fight harder to save Draco, for some reason?”  
  
“Of course,” said Snape slowly. “Because—”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, turning around with his arms folded across his chest, and his eyes narrowed. “Enlighten me as to the  _because_.”  
  
Snape stared at him steadily. Harry stared back. Maybe Snape would have intimidated him with a glare like that when he was still Potions master, but he wasn’t anymore, and Harry hated and resented what Snape seemed to be implying, so he was going to make Snape state it outright instead of hiding behind all his little  _hints_.  
  
“Draco is the smarter one,” Snape said at last. “The one who has more of a future ahead of him, a future that might include standing independent of the bond, one day. The one whose family name is still strong enough to guarantee him some protection, and will be even if his father goes to prison. The Malfoys are rich. The Goyles are known as their lackeys. I thought you would fight harder to free a young man who is more deserving.”  
  
Harry laughed. He kept it low, because he knew the disaster it would be if he did it too loudly, but it was still enough to draw the attention of Changes, who slightly shook her head at him. Harry nodded, and didn’t sneer, because he still had that much control, then turned his back on her so he could face Snape.  
  
Or maybe he ought to call him Severus, because he was grimacing and putting one hand on his right arm. He’d felt Harry’s anger, then. Good.  
  
“You have a strange notion of who’s more deserving,” Harry whispered. “What does intelligence or a family name have to do with whether someone deserves to be free of Azkaban? I’m going to try to convince them that Greg has to remain with me, and I’ll do the same with Draco. It has nothing to do with…” He couldn’t even find a name for the qualities that Snape seemed to feel were important. “What is it? Do you just like Draco better as a person, or something? I know you tried to help him during the war, but I had the impression that you tried to help Greg, too. What  _is_ it?”  
  
Snape only watched him with a pinched brow and pale face. He seemed not to have foreseen that Harry would have any objections to his plan at all, Harry decided. That must be why neither of them was understanding the other at the moment, even though Snape was the smarter one and ought to have understood  _him_.  
  
But then again, if Severus Snape was really as brilliant as he was supposed to be, he would never have suggested something like this in the first place.  
  
“You’re angry with me,” Snape murmured. “I ought to have anticipated that. But you can’t save everyone.”  
  
Harry stayed still. He could see the Wizengamot members shifting around, and for a moment he wondered if the trial was about to start and spare him this conversation. But no, they were just moving so that someone could get to their seat. And still all the seats weren’t full, so they were probably waiting for more of them.  
  
And in the meantime, Harry had to find the words to speak, the way he could understand.  
  
“I can try,” he said. “I can bloody well try when the bond will probably punish me if I don’t, even with the way that I can command it now.” He paused, thinking again of the words Snape had said, and once more it was a struggle to keep his voice down. “You said that I should fight harder for Draco because he might have a chance of standing independent of the bond someday. Is  _that_ what this is about? You like Draco’s chances better because he’s more like you and you think that no one should be in the bond at all?”  
  
Snape’s hands closed down on the chair.  _Fucking right,_ Harry thought, his heart beating wildly.  _That’s it. That’s really the only reason._  
  
“You cannot deny that Mr. Goyle’s dependence on you is, frankly, unhealthy,” said Snape, and lowered his voice until Harry could only hear him because he was listening so hard that he could almost hear Snape’s blood circulating. “You cannot deny that he would be better off separated from you for a time, in an environment where he could learn to stand on his own two feet.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Harry. “Because Azkaban, which is the most regimented existence I can think of,  _would really teach him that._ ”  
  
He was breathless in his anger, and Snape stared at him with the same troubled eyes. It took Harry a lot longer to wrestle his anger under control than he had known it would. For a second, he was actually on the verge of telling Snape that Draco wanted someone to protect him, too, and didn’t have any intention of running away from the bond the second the trials were done. But no, that was Draco’s secret, and the bargain  _they_ had made. Harry wasn’t about to betray Draco’s trust by talking about it.  
  
But Greg wore his secrets on the surface; he had no reason to lie. At the moment, Harry thought it was a strength. It meant he could talk to Snape and maybe be understood.  
  
“Where has he ever developed that independence you want him to have?” Harry whispered harshly. “He was Draco’s lackey, and you never tried to change that. He was even following Draco around when he—when he came into the Room of Requirement and tried to capture me to deliver me to Voldemort.” For once, he didn’t feel bad about the way Snape flinched at the name. He should be flinching at a lot more than that. “His family encouraged him to follow Draco around and do what he was told. He’s  _happy_ in the bond. Maybe he should need more than that, but you don’t want to take up the burden of teaching him. You just want to wash your hands of him and leave him up to Azkaban.” Harry shook his head, then winced and stopped. He was too angry, and doing it that way made his neck burn. “No. I’m going to protect and hold and heal  _all_ of you. Not just a few people because it would be more convenient to do that.”  
  
“You let Mr. Zabini go.” Snape’s words were low, and his eyes flickered over the Wizengamot as if he would be glad to get interrupted, too.  
  
“Because he  _asked_ me,” Harry said. “Just the way that I’m going to let you go after the trials because you  _asked_ me to. That doesn’t mean that you get to make the decisions for Greg.” He leaned back in his chair and turned to face the front again. “In fact, it sounds like you’re still trying to determine where he belongs and what he should do. That power of choice you think he should have?  _You_ don’t want to give it to him.”  
  
“Harry—”  
  
Most of the time, Harry would have listened to him when he said that. Snape’s calling him by his first name was still rare. But Ollondors stood up then and looked around expectantly, and Harry shook his head. “The trial is starting.”  
  
Snape shut up. Harry turned to face the Wizengamot, the bond buzzing in his head and on his arm like cold fire.  _I’m going to save Greg. I want to. I made a promise._  
  
*  
  
 _I did not know that he would do that._  
  
Although now that Severus thought about it, he acknowledged that he should have relied on Potter’s ability and determination to save people, before anything else. Of  _course_ he would want all his vassals with him, not in Azakban, even if there was a good chance that the Wizengamot would release the rest of them if they allowed him to put one in prison. And Greg was the one least able to defend himself, least able to stand on his own without the bond, the greatest liability to Potter, and the one least likely to pay his own debts after the war.  
  
But that had not mattered to Potter.  
  
Severus leaned back and watched as the trial began. Changes took her place in front of the witnesses and Mr. Goyle and looked around with a faint frown until even the whispers of their enemies in the back of the Wizengamot’s seats had subsided. Then she began to speak.  
  
And Severus learned quickly  _why_ Potter was so confident that he would be able to remove Mr. Goyle safely from the trials.  
  
“All of you know that certain pure-blood families encourage their members to act as servants to others,” said Changes, pacing so slowly back and forth that it was hard to see whether her robes were moving or not. “This may be because they have life-debts that need repaying, or perhaps because an older head of the family they serve was once their Lord or Lady. Or perhaps they simply don’t have the money and the connections and the magic to stand on their own.”  
  
Severus shot a swift glance at Mr. Goyle to see how he was taking this. But he only sat in his chair with a blank face, eyes focused on Potter. Severus wondered how much of it he understood.  
  
Draco had a more mask-like face, but it would take more effort than the Wizengamot members were likely to expend, with one Death Eater in front of them, to determine exactly  _what_ emotion he was trying to hide.  
  
“This is what happened with Gregory Goyle,” said Changes. “From birth, he was encouraged to wait on Draco Malfoy, to follow him around and do his bidding. When he was not with Mr. Malfoy, he was with his parents, being told stories about Lords and the good that it would do him to have one.”  
  
Severus sat up straighter. He could see the outlines of their strategy in his mind, and he had to admit the idea would be clever…  
  
If it would work. If the Wizengamot would believe it. Ollondors’s face had gone mask-like itself, and Severus had no idea what her response would be.  
  
“They tried to make Draco Malfoy into his Lord,” Changes said into the silence, “his family and the Malfoys. None of them seem to have suggested being bound to Mr. Malfoy in the true fashion of Lord and vassal, but I am not sure why. Perhaps they thought they were too young to do so, and it would wait until they were both of age and better able to handle the responsibility.  
  
“But then something else happened before Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Goyle came of age, something their families hadn’t anticipated. The Dark Lord returned.”  
  
“Are you a Death Eater, since you use that name?” asked an irritable-looking older woman towards the back of the room. Severus had no idea who she was. He wanted to frown at her for interrupting. He thought Changes’s argument depended on making the ball roll, just so, and it would do their side no good to have her lose her momentum.   
  
“No,” Changes said, and smiled at the woman. “I am a barrister, making a point. The Dark  _Lord_ bound his Death Eaters in a Lord-vassal relationship. There was no other reason for him to call himself that, or to insist on claiming the title  _Lord_ Voldemort.” And that she said without a flinch, which Severus had to commend her for, once his bounding heart recovered. “Will anyone here deny that the Dark Lord was learned in the elements of pure-blood culture, particularly its Darker elements? Will anyone here say they think the name was a coincidence?”  
  
Silence.  
  
Changes nodded, and went on. “So the Lord-vassal relationship was enacted between the Dark Lord and Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Goyle instead. For Mr. Malfoy, it was difficult—for reasons that we shall get to during his trial. But for Mr. Goyle, it was only becoming a vassal the way he had been told he should be all his life.”  
  
“You can’t honestly expect us to accept the excuse that he was only following orders.” To Severus’s silent dismay, it was Ollondors who spoke, leaning forwards and shaking her head. She looked at Potter, with a frown. She probably thought she was helping him by being the opposition here, Severus decided, getting rid of a vassal who would drag him down. “Then we would have to excuse every Death Eater for that reason.”  
  
“But most Death Eaters did not come from families who had been told all their lives that the only thing they had to offer of value was their service,” Changes said smoothly. “They came from families that wanted power, and they allied with their Dark Lord to get it. They wouldn’t have become vassals if they didn’t think it would lead to greater power and independence in time.” She turned and glanced at Lucius, who sat in one of the chairs next to Draco. “Unless any of you think Lucius Malfoy the sort to bend his neck for an imaginary reward?”  
  
All of the court turned and looked at Lucius. His face was blank, too, of course, but Severus would have been more shocked than surprised if he could not play this game.  
  
“No,” Ollondors said at last, reluctantly. “But what makes you sure that Mr. Goyle was only following orders and honestly thought it was for the best?”  
  
“Mr. Goyle is best-suited to answer that for himself,” said Changes, and stepped back, one hand sweeping from Goyle to the front of the courtroom.  
  
Severus shook his head. Was Potter  _mad_ , to have Goyle testify when he was barely competent to speak on ordinary matters?  
  
Then he saw the way Potter lounged back in his chair, a smug smile on his face, and had to change his mind. Potter might know  _exactly_ what he was doing, almost all the time, even in something like this.  
  
It was awe-inspiring. And frightening.  
  
*  
  
Greg walked up to the front of the room. Lots of people were staring at him. He hunched his shoulders. Lord Potter had told him just to feel and do stuff, and act calm. Well, Greg would stay calm, but he hoped he didn’t embarrass his Lord.  
  
“Why did you take the Dark Mark?” That was the tall woman in the front, who looked at him like she wanted to kill him.  
  
Greg relaxed a little. A lot of Death Eaters looked at him like they wanted to kill him. So this was familiar. “Because my father told me to,” he said. “Madam.” He thought it was okay to say that, and it wouldn’t betray his Lord. When he glanced back, Lord Potter was nodding, so it must be okay.  
  
The woman got his attention again. “Didn’t you think it wasn’t a good idea?”  
  
Greg hesitated, picking his way through that sentence a little. He wondered why so many people around him had to speak in such complicated sentences. Maybe it was fun for them. “No,” he said at last. “I thought I had to do it. My parents told me I needed a Lord. And he was a Lord, and he was right there.” He frowned, wondered if he could say one more thing, and then decided he could. “But he didn’t treat me right.”  
  
“If this is some appeal for sympathy on behalf of a torturer and murderer…” someone off to the right said.  
  
Greg wasn’t sure what that meant, but he just kept his eyes on the woman. He thought she was the one who had to ask questions, so she was the one who had to say things.  
  
“What do you mean, he didn’t treat you right?” The woman now only looked as if she would like to beat him up.  
  
“He wanted me to do things without telling me how to do them,” said Greg. He didn’t really want to remember the Dark Lord, but he had to, and he could feel the strength in his right arm. His Lord was right there, supporting him, trusting him. So he had to go on. “He would tell me to do things, and get mad when I didn’t do them right. But I don’t know  _how_. That’s why I need a Lord. A Lord is supposed to give you orders.”  
  
“What kinds of things did he tell you to do?” asked the woman.  
  
“Torture people,” said Greg, and stared at his feet. “But I couldn’t get that right. I can’t do the spells. Then he told me to kill someone, but I messed that up, too. I could beat someone up, because I did that for Draco, but he didn’t want me to do that. He just told me to go along with people and be there, most of the time. Because I wasn’t any good for anything else.”  
  
It hurt to think that. It hurt to know that he hadn’t been good at anything, even though he had to be good at something if he wanted his Lord to keep him. And the Dark Mark had hurt, too, and he didn’t want it anymore, now that he had a better Lord, but he didn’t know how to get rid of it.  
  
Well, it was okay, Greg thought, and looked at the shield mark on his right arm. He had a Lord now who would keep him, and tell him what to do, and make things okay.  
  
“Why are you happy to be with your Lord now?” The woman sounded odd. Maybe she wanted to hurt him in a different way. “Why does he treat you differently than the Dark Lord did?”  
  
Greg smiled at her. Sometimes people could be nice that way. “Because he wants to keep me, and he said that I could stay with him, and he gives me orders I can do. Like guarding his rooms at night. But he always makes sure I sleep during the day, because I would get tired if I never slept.”  
  
The Wizengamot members looked at each other. Greg didn’t know why. He had told the truth. If they put him under Veritaserum, he would just say the same thing over again.  
  
Maybe they knew that. The woman stepped back and said, “No further questions,” and Lord Potter nodded at Greg to go back to his seat.  
  
Greg went and sat down. He hoped he hadn’t messed that up, but he didn’t think he had. Lord Potter was smiling.  
  
*  
  
“You propose to keep Mr. Goyle with you, and under the bond?”  
  
Harry rose to his feet. As he had thought it would when he worked this out with Changes, Greg’s trial had gone smoothly. There was no reason for it not to. Greg had done plenty of bad things, and he didn’t really regret them as much as he regretted not being good at them, but there was also little point in punishing him. Azkaban would have little effect on him, for the same reason it had on Sirius; Sirius knew he was innocent, Greg thought he was. His family didn’t have a lot of money to confiscate. He hadn’t asked for mercy for his family members, and he would do anything Harry said, including stay under house arrest or give up his wand.  
  
“I do,” Harry said. “I already made the promise that he could stay with me, and I would keep him as a vassal even if I dissolved the bond for all the others.”  
  
“Forward of you, Mr. Potter,” Ollondors murmured, but shook her head when Harry looked at her with his eyebrows raised. “Yes. Well. A vote for Mr. Goyle to share Mr. Potter’s punishment, as a vassal under the hand of his Lord?”  
  
The vote went quickly, and without one exception. Harry sighed. Snape had been wrong. The Wizengamot didn’t just want a Death Eater to punish. They had specific victims in mind, and they cared very little about Greg.  
  
“And tomorrow…Mr. Draco Malfoy.”  
  
 _And I know exactly who that victim is,_ Harry thought, seeing the curl to Ollondors’s lip, and the light in her eyes.


	52. Draco Malfoy

Pansy knocked briskly on the sitting room door, then waited for an answer. When she got none, she frowned and knocked again.  
  
The door opened abruptly enough to send Pansy reeling back. The shield mark on her arm flared to life in the same moment, dazzling with moving shades of green and silver. Staring at it, Pansy nearly forgot to stare at the face that appeared in the narrow gap of the doorway and prevented her from seeing inside.  
  
“Yes?” Potter asked, his normally warm voice cool enough that Pansy winced. “I’m _busy_.”  
  
Pansy leaned in until she was nearly nose-to-nose with him. Potter had a forbidding enough expression on his face that it was hard to do, but fuck that; Pansy had a mission here, and she wasn’t letting it go until she was satisfied. “You’re also distressing your friends, confusing Greg, upsetting Snape, and making everyone turn to me as though _I_ was the one who ought to solve your emotional crises,” she announced. “You might as well come out of that bloody room and eat a little, and let Greg see you. That would comfort at least _some_ of them.”  
  
“I have someone else I have to comfort now.”  
  
Pansy opened her mouth, then closed it again. It wasn’t so much the expression on Potter’s face that stopped her, or even the colors coruscating on her arm as if her shield mark was about to fly away. It was the way that Potter was looking over his shoulder into the depths of the room, which he still kept carefully sheltered with the door so Pansy couldn’t see it.  
  
 _Of course._ That was the real reason Potter hadn’t come to his lunch, or his dinner, and the real reason that he stood there as if he would lash out at Pansy if she tried to press him. Bloody Potter was being a bloody Lord sacrificing everything for one of his bloody vassals. And while Pansy couldn’t deny that Draco might need the comfort right now, when Ollondors had looked at him with hatred in her eyes and he knew the Wizengamot wouldn’t be neutral, she couldn’t restrain a tiny bubble of contempt.  
  
 _I didn’t need that comfort. Greg didn’t need it. And neither of us had reason to think that the Wizengamot was going to be neutral._  
  
But getting Potter to leave someone he could sacrifice himself for was bloody near impossible. So Pansy just nodded and said, “Can Kreacher bring some food up here?”  
  
“Draco’s too sick to eat.”  
  
The answer was so quick, but so soft, and Potter was peering over his shoulder again, which meant he missed the—eloquent, Pansy was sure—expression on her own face. “But there are other people in the room who might need to,” Pansy said. “You don’t want Draco to feel guilty for your growling stomach, do you?”  
  
Potter finally focused on her again, looking more than a little irritated. “This is just a ploy to try to get me to eat.”  
  
Pansy folded her arms. “At least it has that much justification to it. What is _yours_ , a ploy to make people feel sorry for you because you’re hungry? Or some diabolical plan to punish your stomach because it’s been rebelling against you?”  
  
Potter gave her a strange look. “I haven’t been vomiting or anything.”  
  
Pansy looked around, but there was no soft patch of wall nearby to bang her head into. With a sigh, she turned back to face her Lord. “It was a fucking _joke_ , Potter.” She normally wouldn’t have sworn, but Potter had been cooped up in the sitting room with Draco for hours. What was he doing, listening to the story of Draco’s life from birth on and trying to determine what had gone wrong that way?  
  
“Oh.” Potter looked over his shoulder again.  
  
Pansy tugged on his arm, and did it until he looked at her. “There’s no reason for you to suffer,” she said. “Let Kreacher bring up the food under a Warming Charm, and you can keep it here until both of you are ready to eat.”  
  
Potter paused, thought about it, then nodded. “That’s a really good idea, actually. If the charms are strong enough, then the scent of the food won’t provoke Draco.”  
  
Pansy hesitated. Well, maybe if Potter heard this from her first, then she would stave off an explosion later. Because she knew that Professor Snape was probably going to say it the moment that Potter came out of the room. “Don’t you think that the bond is influencing you too strongly when it comes to him? I mean, you were his enemy, and now you’re spending all day in a room with him and worrying about what he could _smell_.”  
  
“You can think of it as concern for my clothes if you want,” Potter said, lowering his voice. “I don’t want vomit all over them.”  
  
Pansy gave him another stare. “Some people might accept that conclusion, but _I_ happen to know that you aren’t worried about any such thing.”  
  
“What kind of answer do you want from me?” Potter’s voice lowered further, but lost the hushed tone that Pansy thought he had been adopting for Draco’s comfort. “Yes, the bond is influencing me to stay with Draco. Yes, it’s not something I would have done a month ago. Yes, he wouldn’t have come to me for comfort a month ago. But what _use_ does standing around and saying that have? I would still want to comfort him, and he would still need it. And I know that you aren’t stupid enough to think Professor Snape or his parents would be much use, in a crisis like this.”  
  
Pansy opened her mouth, then shut it again. It was true that Professor Snape would probably start talking acidly about the bond, which was hardly likely to help Draco in this particular situation. And Potter was looking at Pansy with his piercing eyes, and Pansy couldn’t find anything in them to refute what he’d said, either. The bond was influencing them. Fine. Potter had already accepted that and got past it in the way that Professor Snape apparently couldn’t. Draco either didn’t care or was too sunk in misery to care right now. Why not leave them alone to get on with it?  
  
Pansy took a little step back, and bowed. “I still think the food is a good idea,” she said. “You know, so that you don’t fall and bang your head because you’re dizzy or anything.”  
  
Potter nodded. “It is a good idea, and I didn’t think of Kreacher and the Warming Charm before. Thank you.”  
  
Pansy smiled at him. Perhaps the bond was influencing her, too, to make Potter’s thanks such a welcome thing, but the green and silver bands had stopped waltzing their way across her arm, and that was enough for happiness. “Then I’ll tell him to bring it up.” She didn’t ask what Potter wanted to eat. Kreacher would cook enough hearty food, since Draco had Black blood and he was already upset about Potter’s shutting himself up, to feed any two people.  
  
Potter had already turned around and shut the door with a final nod, so he could return to Draco. Pansy proceeded slowly down the stairs, something turning over in her head. The amount of time Potter and Draco were spending together, the way that Draco had almost collapsed into Potter’s arms when they came out of the trial, the way that Potter kept turning to check on his position as if he was afraid Draco might have fainted without him…  
  
Then Pansy shrugged a little. _If they want to do anything to make their relationship deeper than that between a Lord and a vassal, that’s their business._ Professor Snape might worry about it more than she was, but Pansy was not, thank Merlin, Head of Slytherin House.  
  
*  
  
“Is she gone?” Draco knew that his voice sounded pathetic, but he really didn’t think he could stand for Pansy to see him like this.  
  
“She’s gone.”  
  
A second later, Harry’s comforting weight was back beside him, one arm curved around his shoulders. Draco turned and let his face fall into Harry’s shirt. He held himself stiff, so that he didn’t weep or quiver, but inside, he felt his stomach turning over and over, dissolving in anger and panic and regret.  
  
He hadn’t felt this bad even when the Dark Lord assigned him the task of killing Dumbledore. Although he hadn’t acknowledged it to himself at the time—after all, there was no way that he could, without the Dark Lord finding out—Draco had held onto the hope that the Boy-Who-Lived would stop the Dark Lord and spare Draco from having to choose between a seemingly impossible task and his parents’ lives. There was someone out there who would save him.  
  
Nothing and no one could save him from having to endure the trial. And although Harry had done a lot for all of them so far and had even spared Greg and Professor Snape from having to go to Azkaban, Draco wasn’t sure that he would stand up and protest if Draco went to Azkaban. What _could_ he do? Nothing at all. The Wizengamot would enforce the punishment, and they might make things difficult for Harry and the rest of them if Harry protested too much.  
  
He might spend years in Azkaban. His wand might be snapped. And all for a stupid decision made when he was sixteen years old and had thought that what he wanted most in the world was vengeance.  
  
It had only taken one look into the Dark Lord’s eyes to know that _wasn’t_ what he wanted most after all. What he wanted most was to live, and to have his parents beside him. But it had been too late to back out then.  
  
And it was too late to come up with mad plans to avoid the trial now.  
  
“This was what I tried to tell you earlier,” Harry whispered to him, when they had been sitting there in that silence for some time longer, and Draco could still feel the waves of rippling shock spreading through him. “That your father’s arranged for some of his friends to testify for you.”  
  
Draco looked up, blinking. He didn’t remember any trace of Harry saying anything like that, but then, he’d been pretty out of it for a while there. “What do you mean?”  
  
Harry reached out and moved a strand of Draco’s hair out of his eyes. His own eyes showed no contempt, although Draco didn’t think he’d ever shivered and fallen apart before a challenge like this. “He has some friends whose testimony might be able to spare him from Azkaban. But he’s agreed that they’ll testify for you instead and say that you’re a good boy and you wouldn’t need Azkaban to reform you. I wasn’t going to tell you at first. But now the trial is tomorrow and they’ll show up and…I think you need it.”  
  
“Like a potion,” Draco muttered, but his heart wasn’t behind the bitterness that he put into the words.  
  
Harry nodded gravely. “If you want to think of it that way.”  
  
Draco sat back and drew a hand over his face. Merlin, he must look a mess. He hoped that he could avoid his mother for a while after he left the room. She would take one look at him and know he had been frightened. “I don’t know why I’m shaking like this. I don’t know why you put up with it.”  
  
Harry snorted, which sounded a little more like the boy Draco knew. “What do you suggest I do? Toss you out of this room on your ear?” He shook his head when Draco stared at him. “Your reaction might not be—I don’t know, adult or professional or whatever you want to call it, but at the very least, it’s more mature and less damaging to the bond than Professor Snape’s was.”  
  
“You didn’t know that he was going to alter the bond like that, though,” Draco whispered, and glanced over his shoulder a little, wincing. Then he remembered that Professor Snape wasn’t in the room, and would have no way of hearing about this if Harry didn’t tell him. He cleared his throat, awkwardly.  
  
“I didn’t,” said Harry, and his hand was strong and steady on Draco’s shoulder. “But I stand by what I said. He might not have known the consequences of him doing that, either. But it could have resulted in him going to Azkaban for a long time, if that magical theory expert wasn’t willing to lie for us. I’ll remind him of that, if he objects to the amount of time I’m spending with you.” He gave Draco a warm, open smile. “He’ll help you if he possibly can, too.”  
  
He seemed to be on the verge of telling Draco something else, too, but in the end, he shut his mouth and shook his head. His arm curled strongly around Draco’s shoulders.  
  
Draco felt calmer now that he knew he wouldn’t be alone—well, alone except for Harry—in the trial, but there was something else he wanted to know. “Why don’t you despise me for crying like this?”  
  
“I already told you,” said Harry.  
  
“But I mean, _Gryffindorily_ ,” said Draco, and flushed when he saw the smile creeping up Harry’s twitching lips. “Look, I know that’s not a word. But I thought Gryffindors despised people who cried all the time, and cowards, and I’m both. My father would deplore my dragging the family name through the mud like this, and I know that you don’t think that. But why am I not getting rolling eyes from you? Why aren’t you biting your tongue when you talk to me?”  
  
Harry hesitated for a long time. Draco didn’t ask again, though, because he was now sure that an answer was coming. He just had to wait and see what happened.  
  
“I don’t know how much you know about my childhood,” Harry finally began.  
  
“You were raised by Muggles,” said Draco. “And…that’s all I know, really.” He had been about to say that he’d always thought Harry had been raised with knowledge of who he was and with knowledge of being rich and all the rest of it, but the more he thought of it, the more he realized that couldn’t be true. Harry had been too wide-eyed when Draco met him for the first time. Too much like a chattering child who had walked into a wonderful dream.  
  
Harry nodded. “Well, that much is true. Dumbledore was afraid that I would grow up with a swollen head if he left me with someone in the wizarding world, so he gave me to my aunt and uncle. My mother’s sister, and her husband.” He paused again. Draco was learning to read those pauses, though, or maybe just learning to read the warm silence that pulsed through the shield mark on his arm. He waited without growing impatient, and in time, Harry began again.  
  
“I not only didn’t know who I was, I didn’t know that magic existed. Sometimes I did things that I didn’t think were normal, like being able to end up on the roof somehow when I hadn’t climbed there or my hair all growing back in one night after my aunt cut it, but there was never anyone to tell me I was a wizard. Until the night of my eleventh birthday when Hagrid delivered my Hogwarts letter, anyway.”  
  
“ _That’s_ why you like him!” Draco felt like an idiot for not realizing it before. He had only known that Harry had made friends with Hagrid before he came to Hogwarts somehow, and he had always supposed that Hagrid was one of his guards, or maybe he lived near the Muggle neighborhood where Harry had grown up.  
  
“Well, I also like Hagrid because he was loyal to me, and he tried to help me, and he was the first person who ever got me a birthday gift,” Harry said, and his voice was a shade cooler. “If you start attacking him for being a half-giant, then I’m going to stop telling you this story right now.”  
  
Draco sighed, a long, hard noise that made Harry look at him with a puzzled expression. “Give me credit for having learned _that_ much,” Draco said, and shook his head. “No, I know he’s special to you, like Granger and Weasley are. I may not ever like them, but I don’t insult them for the same reasons anymore. I can do the same for Hagrid.”  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said, and he grinned. “I have to say, if this is a result of the bond, it’s a surprisingly nice one.”  
  
Draco would have disagreed with that, but he was safe and warm, sitting next to Harry, and he knew that he wasn’t alone anymore. He wasn’t even sure that was part of the bond. Harry, the git, just seemed to have that effect on lots of people he met.  
  
“But what does the way you grew up have to do with me?” Draco asked.  
  
“Oh.” Harry hesitated again. “My aunt really didn’t want me there. She hadn’t had any contact with my mum for a long time before she died, and then Dumbledore dropped me on their doorstep with a note saying who I was and that they had to take care of me. So I grew up—I mean, they didn’t—it wasn’t very nice.”  
  
Draco leaned more heavily on Harry, and said nothing. Sometimes, that was more effective than words.  
  
It was this time, too, because Harry started talking again. “My first bedroom was a cupboard. They called me names and told me I was worthless. I had to run away from my cousin all the time, because he would beat me up. And sometimes I lay awake in the cupboard and cried when I was a kid, because I wanted someone to come and take me away and tell me that it was all a mistake and my parents were still alive.” His arm tightened around Draco again. “I know what it’s like when you don’t have any hope, and you’re trying as hard as you can just to keep hope alive. I would never make fun of you for that.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth, and found nothing to say this time. But he honestly didn’t know if that was because of his throat tightening up, or because of outrage. That the _Boy-Who-Lived_ got treated that way…  
  
It made him wonder what else Harry had gone through, the things he wasn’t saying. And whether he had started hating the wizarding world, because it had probably seemed like something he could escape into, and then it turned out not to be that way at all.  
  
It did make Draco ask one more question, though. “So Hagrid was the first wizard you met?” He could call a half-giant a wizard for Harry’s sake, he told himself virtuously. He _could_. It made his tongue itch, but that was nothing next to the amount of displeasure that flowed through the bond if he insulted Harry’s friends.  
  
And honestly, he didn’t have much left to insult Harry’s friends for. He had fallen lower than they ever could, in this world where they and not he had fought on the right side of the war. They could taunt him for his standing, and they would be perfectly correct. They wouldn’t want to exchange places with him, while before, Draco thought that at least Weasley had been envious of his wealth.  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, and smiled at him again. “And he was the one who told me that I was famous, and a little about Voldemort. He didn’t call him by that name, of course, except when he really had to, because I’d never heard of him. And he was angry with my aunt and uncle for not telling me anything about myself. It was the first time someone had ever got angry at them on my behalf, instead of about Dudley or something.”  
  
He still looked as though the memory kept him warm at night. Draco licked his lips and asked another question. “And I was the second wizard you met?”  
  
Harry gave him an odd look. “Well…I suppose so. I mean, after all the people in the Leaky Cauldron who wanted to shake my hand. But you were the second one I really _talked_ to. They didn’t want to listen to me, unless I was going to make a speech or something.”  
  
“Then why did you turn against me on the train?” Draco asked. “If Weasley was the third wizard you met, and I was the second one?” It still made his throat scorch, but he thought that was from the effort of asking the question at all, and not because he was calling Weasley by his name instead of his nickname.  
  
Harry blinked once. “Because Ron was already my friend,” he said. “You talked to me about Hogwarts and stuff, but you weren’t my friend. You reminded me of my cousin.”  
  
Draco sat up with his face flushed. Maybe he could no longer deny most of the things that Harry said to him, but _this,_ he wasn’t going to let Harry get away with. “How dare you say that! I never chased you and tried to beat you up.”  
  
“You would have had Greg and Vincent beat me up, if you could have,” Harry said in a level voice that made Draco want to hide.  
  
But while he needed someone to support him right now, and teach him better how to be part of the Light and independent of his father, he didn’t need someone to cow him. So he lifted his chin and said, “Yeah, but they weren’t with me when we met in the robe shop. Why did you turn against me?”  
  
“You were pompous and already talking about prejudices,” Harry said quietly. “And I understood later that you were asking about blood when you asked about my parents. Ron didn’t care about that. He just wanted to talk to me and _explain_ everything, and he was the first person other than Hagrid who was ever nice to me.”  
  
Draco stared at him, his jaw hanging open a little. If he’d been more polite to Harry, he would have been his best friend? Weasley wouldn’t have been able to come between them?  
  
No, he saw as Harry looked at him with eyes as stubborn as his own. No, he would have had to be _nice_ , not just polite. And that might have been a little beyond his eleven-year-old self.   
  
“I…fine,” Draco said. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. And I trust that you won’t make fun of me, and maybe I feel a little better about the way we met when we were kids than I did.” And it had given him something to think about besides the trial, he realized abruptly. That was probably the real reason that Harry had talked to him like this.  
  
But he had wanted to share the truth, too, and he had argued back enough that Draco didn’t think Harry would go along with everything his vassals wanted just because they were his vassals. It was the bond, but it was so much more complicated than that. Harry seemed to already be living in that more complicated world.  
  
Draco wanted to join him there.  
  
“I’m sorry for anything I did that made you feel genuinely hurt, instead of just stung,” Harry said, and Draco snorted in spite of himself. Harry grinned at him and tugged him close again. “So. You know I’ll have your back in your trial tomorrow?”  
  
It took long moments for Draco to swallow and nod his assent, but he managed it. It wasn’t Harry’s support he doubted. It was his own strength, once he was up in the front of the courtroom and the focus of all those eyes.  
  
But he would have Harry behind him, and if his own strength ran out…  
  
“I’ll be your strength,” Harry breathed into his ear. “I’ll be there.”  
  
If Harry was there, someone who had survived living in a cupboard and growing up without knowing about magic, then Draco thought _he_ could probably make it, too.  
  



	53. The Malfoys, Day One

“Mr. Potter? I wanted to speak to you, before you went into the courtroom this morning.”  
  
Harry turned around and regarded Ollondors with a wary eye. He hadn’t forgotten how she had looked at Draco, and he thought he knew what this—bustling up to him in the anteroom before they got into the trial—was about.  
  
“Yes, madam?” he asked, resigned. Changes was with Draco, trying to make sure that he knew what to say, and that he remembered the most likely worst consequence for his actions was Azkaban, not the Dementors’ Kiss. That had been what was really driving the way he had almost broken down yesterday, Harry knew. He might  _talk_ about Azkaban, but what Draco feared more than anything else was death. Or maybe his own death plus the deaths of his parents.  
  
Ollondors drew him a little apart from his vassals, though it was difficult, in that small room filled mostly with chairs and a table, to get him  _far_ away. She cleared her throat. “Do you think that it’s the wisest course for you to go on defending the Malfoys?”  
  
“I only intend to defend one of them,” Harry said, and shifted his arm so that his silver shield with the four green dots appeared in the corner of her vision. “The one who’s bound to me by the Lordship commitment. Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy can stand and fend for themselves, as far as I’m concerned.”  
  
Ollondors gave him a blank look. She had obviously never considered that. Harry wondered why not. More and more, he had the impression that the Wizengamot had played its games among its own members for so long that they had forgotten what kind of people they might seem like to the outside world.  
  
 _And maybe how those people in the outside world think, too._  
  
Harry bit his lip thoughtfully. If there was any possible way that he could use that to his advantage, then he would.  
  
“Fine,” said Ollondors, speaking in a clipped voice that seemed to say more about how her own plans had been overset than anything else. “But you have to see that associating with any member of the Malfoy family could tarnish your reputation.”  
  
Harry laughed. “And the papers and the public think my reputation is shining right now?”  
  
Again Ollondors hesitated. Then she said, “The firestorm that comes down could make this one look mild.”  
  
Harry had to shrug. “I’m already confined to a house for a year, and monitored, as far as what magic I can use goes,” he said. “I already have to live with the knowledge that a load of other Hogwarts students, most of whom committed the same crimes under the same fear as Pansy, are never going to be punished for it, because they weren’t Slytherins. I already have to live with the knowledge that a lot of people  _in the Ministry_ who followed Death Eater orders or used the Unforgivables Curses in fear of their lives are never going to be punished for it, while I am. I know that we’re the test cases, and the ones that all those eyes are focused on, so it’s worse. But telling me that it could be worse is sort of stupid. I know that. It’s just not enough to make me change my mind.”  
  
Ollondors considered him up and down. Harry stared back silently, stubbornly. He didn’t understand her. Sometimes she seemed to grasp that he couldn’t just walk away from the obligations of Lordship and desert his vassals; she’d even helped him use it in a few trials. And then she thought he should turn his back on Draco.  
  
 _Maybe it’s like Snape and Greg,_ Harry thought.  _He didn’t think about the bond or the promises I’d made to Greg. He just wanted to protect Draco, and he thought I should abandon Greg to do it. And Ollondors wants me to protect myself, and thinks I should abandon Draco to do it._  
  
“I cannot help you, if you persist in this folly,” Ollondors whispered, so quietly that Harry had to concentrate to hear her. “If you insist on tying your name to the Malfoys’, then all my help goes away.”  
  
“Do whatever you like with Lucius and Narcissa,” said Harry, waving his hand. “I know that Draco will be upset, because they’re his parents, but I can’t protect them. And I think that Lucius Malfoy  _deserves_ Azkaban.”  
  
“There’ll be no problem with that.” Ollondors’s jaw had tightened. “But we must have the whole family.”  
  
“Why?” Harry asked, and all he felt was curious at the moment, not angry. “Do you think that anyone who has the last name Malfoy is equally guilty?”  
  
“If you knew what he had done…”  
  
Harry sighed. “I  _saw_ some of what he did. I had a connection with Voldemort, and he used to use Draco to torture people, just because Draco didn’t like it and Voldemort wanted to hurt him. But he could perform the spells, so it’s not the same as what Voldemort tried to do with Greg. I know that Draco did bad things. But there’s the Lordship bond, and there’s the fact that he could have turned me over to the Snatchers and didn’t, and there’s the life-debts he owes me.”  
  
Ollondors shook her head. “I speak of other things.”  
  
“Did he do other things?” It was true that Harry had never asked Draco what had happened the year he was at Hogwarts with Snape as Headmaster, the way he had with Pansy. He knew that the case against Pansy was based on things other students said she had done, and the case against Draco was based on him being a Death Eater.  
  
“His family has done far worse than simply their activities during this war.” Ollondors’s eyes flickered over to Lucius. “You cannot have studied the actions that Lucius Malfoy claimed responsibility for, during the first war. And then he claimed that he was under  _Imperius_ and that he’d had to do those things. Imperius, indeed.” She shook her head.  
  
“Draco was a kid during the first war,” Harry said, his heart sinking a little. “Try him for what he did, fine. Don’t try him for what his father did.”  
  
“He  _is_ his family,” said Ollondors, and her eyes came back to him. “I cannot separate them.”  
  
“Why can you do it when it’s the Carrows?” Harry demanded, seizing the first parallel that came to mind. “You have that cousin of theirs on the Wizengamot, but I don’t think you’re going to say she should go to prison along with her cousins who were Death Eaters.”  
  
“The Malfoys have dominated politics in the Ministry for too long.” Ollondors folded her arms and looked up and down the anteroom as though she thought someone would actually want to spy on her conversation with Harry. “They will never lose that influence unless we rip them out, root and branch.”  
  
“Fine,” Harry said. “Then you can send Lucius to Azkaban and even Narcissa, maybe.” He wasn’t actually sure how Narcissa’s trial would go. “But Draco doesn’t have contacts in the Ministry.”  
  
“He has people who would fight for him,” said Ollondors. “Simply because of his name and the reward they might receive in the future.”  
  
Harry scowled at her. “Is that like people who would condemn him simply because of his name and what his father did?”  
  
Ollondors nodded once. “I tried to warn you, Lord Potter,” she said, and Harry doubted that her switch to a more formal title was actually a good thing for him. “You will receive no further help from me if you are determined to let a Malfoy drag you down.”  
  
She turned and marched away to the door that opened into the courtroom. Harry drew in a shaky breath and looked around for Lucius. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have his friends testify for Draco after all. It would probably just confirm for Ollondors that Draco, like his father and mother, had contacts in the Ministry and politically powerful friends.  
  
Instead, he found Draco, his body tense and his eyes silent.  
  
“If necessary, I’ll send your father’s friends away when they get here,” Harry said at once, leaning forwards so that Draco was the only one who could hear him. “It won’t be that great a hardship.”  
  
“I’ll give up my money, if I have to,” Draco muttered, pressing his eyes closed. “I’ll give up my wand. And I—I don’t want to go to Azkaban, but I would rather do that than get Kissed.”  
  
“If they sentence you to the Kiss,” Harry said, his mind already spinning with plans, “then I’ll smuggle you out of the country myself, and stand trial for that. Because they might be able to put you in Azkaban, it might be necessary, or right, or just, but getting your soul sucked out because you were caught up in the war isn’t going to make sense when they didn’t do it with Greg, and they’re not even checking the arms of the Aurors in the Ministry for Dark Marks.”  
  
“Oh, yes, we are, Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry jumped and spun around. Auror Stone was a heavy woman; it seemed that she shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him. But there she was, standing behind him, face calm and bland and cold, as usual.  
  
“The Ministry would be willing to ignore most of what its people did when the Death Eaters were in charge,” said Stone, with a nod. “But the Ministry also doesn’t want the public scandal that I would raise if they did nothing. So we are checking. And I don’t think that the public would stand for having hundreds of wizards Kissed.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “Is that the punishment some people are proposing for all Death Eaters?”  
  
“Some people,” said Stone, without turning a hair. “Other people are arguing that they should all go to Azkaban and be stripped of their personal possessions. Others pointed out that that didn’t work in the first war, and are arguing for them to be stripped of their magic. And some people are saying that the punishments should vary based on their individual cases.” She let her eyes flicker.  
  
Harry nodded in determination. She agreed with the last one. Well, so did he. Someone like Lucius Malfoy  _should_ be punished more than someone in the Ministry who had taken the Dark Mark but had never tortured anyone, and someone like Fenrir Greyback should be punished more severely than Draco.  
  
“Thank you for your support, Auror Stone,” he said, as formally as he could when he saw the door of the courtroom opening. “Do you think that a submissive demeanor is going to work with people who think all punishments should be the same, or not?”  
  
Stone studied him for long enough that Harry heard murmuring beyond the door. The Wizengamot would have expected him to enter right away. Snape moved towards the door in his place, turning his head so he could keep Harry and Draco under observation.  
  
“I think you should remember that not all the people in a group might believe that the punishments should be the same,” Stone said. “And that some people might be your allies where you would never have believed they could be.”  
  
Then she turned her back and joined the Aurors standing guard around Draco’s parents, and Harry had to guide Draco in with an arm around his shoulders. He knew the stir that would create when Ollondors and her allies saw him. He didn’t care.  
  
 _I think I understand. I just wish I understood better._ He and Changes had planned and plotted the trials, and they had planned and plotted this one, but Harry had a feeling their plans would have to change. He also didn’t know if he should try to do that on his own.  
  
 _I’ll do what I have to. Still better for Draco to go to Azkaban than to get the Kiss_.  
  
*  
  
The barrister spent a long time smoothing down her robes before she spoke.  
  
Draco didn’t need to look at the faces of the Wizengamot, or Harry’s face, to know that was a bad sign. But he was in the courtroom now, and it would be far more damaging to show his emotions than it was when he was with Harry by himself. He merely sat mute in his chair, and waited for Changes to talk.  
  
“All of you know the Malfoys,” said Changes, and glanced back and forth from face to face as if making sure that all of them were with her. Draco frowned, then wiped the frown off his face. He didn’t know what Changes was doing. “And you know that many of them have had a reputation for power, politics, and less than forthright and honest dealings.”  
  
Draco wanted to snort. But he was seated next to his mother now, and she had a grip so tight on his fingers that he didn’t dare.  
  
“And everyone knows, or should know, that they did not come out of this war untarnished.” Changes began to move, pacing back and forth slowly, her head bowed, her hands clasped behind her back. Draco wondered how much of that came from a scrip, how much from deep thought, and how much from the simple fact that she really didn’t know what to say next. “Two of them carry the Dark Mark. The other hosted You-Know-Who in her home for months.”  
  
His mother’s hand tightened. Draco could imagine the bitter things she would say, if her voice was her own. He could only squeeze back, though, and shake his head a little. It wasn’t any more advisable for her to speak up right now than it was for him.  
  
“They should be punished for their crimes,” said Changes. “For any murder and torture they committed, for any support of their Dark Lord they practiced.” She paused and looked straight at Lucius. “For breaking out of Azkaban.”  
  
Draco thought his breathing was too loud and persistent, and did what he could to suppress it. But then he coughed and only had to start breathing again, and Harry shot him a stern look. Draco nodded back in return to that, and tried his best to fold his hands in his lap again and calm down.  
  
“But they should not be punished for their  _reputations_ ,” said Changes, turning to face the Wizengamot again, and her voice was confident enough this time that Draco was sure she had found the tactic she intended to use at last. “For the deeds of their ancestors. Those Malfoys are dead and gone, and they would not necessarily know or care about anything their descendants have done. Wizards and witches of the Wizengamot, let us punish the crimes in front of us today. There are certainly enough of them.”  
  
“I still want to know why  _Harry Potter_ is associating with them,” muttered a witch towards the back. Draco squinted at her, thinking her features were familiar. Yes, she looked like portraits of his Rosier ancestors that he had seen in the Manor.  
  
“Because he is bound as Lord to one of them,” said Changes, without missing a beat or making it sound as if the question did anything other than bore her. “Now. May I know the formal charges against Draco Malfoy, Madam Ollondors?” She faced that witch with her hands clasped in front of her.  
  
Draco shot a glance at Harry. Harry nodded at him, but didn’t take his eyes off Changes. Draco bit his lip in response. If Harry was that calm, the least he could do was try to match his serenity.  
  
“Torture,” said Ollondors, and the light hostility in her voice didn’t fool Draco. He could see the much deeper hostility in her eyes. “Attempted murder of Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore. Bringing Death Eaters into the school. Attempting to capture Harry Potter in the middle of the Battle of Hogwarts.”  
  
"Torture of Death Eaters?" Changes's voice was absolutely calm, but Draco still flinched. He saw Ollondors smile. Changes never looked around.  
  
"Yes," said Ollondors. "I think the other charges are sufficiently specific that you don't need to ask me to define them further," she added, as Changes opened her mouth.  
  
"I was not going to argue with you about them, or ask you to define them further," Changes said, with a low bow. "I only wanted to make sure what charges are being applied against Draco Malfoy, and which against his father and mother."  
  
Ollondors gave Changes a cold frown that was probably meant to be quelling. Draco didn't think he could have resisted it, but Changes must have stood up to worse challenges in her time as a barrister. She only looked back at Ollondors with quiet interest, but no sign of weakening. "I think that torture and attempted murder and murder will be among the charges laid against them as well," said Ollondors.  
  
Changes smiled. "But not the attempted murder of Dumbledore, or attempting to capture his current Lord in the middle of the Battle of Hogwarts."  
  
"No," Ollondors conceded, frowning as though she didn't see what Changes gained from making the charges so specific. For that matter, Draco wasn't sure he did, either. Phrased like that, he had done a lot of horrible things, and he didn't see how the Wizengamot would vote other than for death. "Not his parents, for those things."  
  
"Good," said Changes. "Then I would like to explain the first of the charges, with the help of Lord Harry Potter." She turned and waved a hand up and down at Harry as though commanding him to come forwards. Draco bristled a little. He didn't think someone should casually command Harry, after all he had done for the wizarding world.  
  
But Harry simply stood and walked over to confront the Wizengamot. He didn't look afraid. He didn't look much of anything. Draco blinked, a little frightened and a little impressed. He hadn't known Harry could hide his emotions like that.  
  
Maybe it was because, with his vassals, he had never felt the need.  
  
"I had visions of Voldemort, when the connection through my scar was still active," Harry said. He didn't seem to rejoice in the flinches that that name could still cause; Draco felt one tremble through his father. Then again, Harry might be hiding that sign of emotion, as well. "Sometimes I saw him ordering Mr. Draco Malfoy to torture people. Draco never wanted to, but that was one reason Voldemort ordered him to. He wanted to use someone unwilling to torture people. It suited his sadistic pleasure."  
  
"But he  _did_ torture people," said Ollondors. "You're providing the proof yourself, Mr. Potter."  
  
"He did," said Harry. "He wasn't very good at the spells, but he did cast them." He turned and looked at Draco. Draco looked back with his stomach churning. Was this the fighting for him that Harry had said he would do? Draco had to grant it was effective, but he thought it might only be effective in sending him to Azkaban.  
  
"Then why are you arguing with us?" Ollondors studied Harry as though he was the solution to a puzzle. "If you agree that your vassal is guilty of the crimes that would condemn him?"  
  
"Because I want you to see that he didn't do it out of any sadistic pleasure himself." Harry was looking at her again. Draco clenched his hands. As uncomfortable as having Harry's eyes on him was when he didn't know exactly what Harry was doing, he found he preferred that to having Harry's back turned. "That was the reason. He did it out of fear and weakness, not out of longing to do it, the way that Bellatrix Lestrange or Voldemort himself would have."  
  
Ollondors snorted softly and shook her head. "Someone who can be defended only by being compared to You-Know-Who himself isn't a paragon of virtue."  
  
"I never said he was."  
  
There was some more silence, short but baffled. Then Jenkyns leaned in and said, "Do we need to waste more time on this charge? The sentence for torture is six years in Azkaban."  
  
Draco felt his head spin. He thought he might actually have fallen if not for his mother's supporting hand, and the warmth from the shield mark on his arm. He knew Harry hadn't abandoned him. He was doing what he thought was the best.  
  
Except that he thought his definition of what was best and Harry's might not actually agree.  
  
"Excuse me, sir." Changes was standing up with her hand apologetically raised. "But exactly what kinds of torture, and for how long? Do you assign all torture the same length of six years in Azkaban? From my study of the law, I thought that was for deliberate use of the Cruciatus six times in succession on the same person, or holding someone under it long enough to break their minds, or use of lesser torture spells for up to a week in succession."  
  
Jenkyns stared at her. Ollondors stared at her. Harry didn't stare, but kept his firm, unsmiling gaze on the Wizengamot. Draco lifted his head and peered from face to face, trying to understand.  
  
"What does that matter?" Jenkyns snapped. "The sentence for all torture is the same."  
  
"Ah, but it  _is not_ ," said Changes, and her voice was sharp. "It cannot be, or there would be no point in discussing the details of a case. But that is exactly what we do, with torture or any other charge. Unless you're going to tell me that we're not going to discuss the details of the charges here because Mr. Malfoy is so obviously guilty, in which case why have a trial?"  
  
Ollondors brought her hand down sharply. Harry turned his attention to her. Draco swallowed again. He thought maybe they had been trying to anger her deliberately, but why? Until she had started ranting about his family to Harry this morning, she had been their strongest ally on the Wizengamot.  
  
"You know that he's guilty," Ollondors hissed. "His own  _Lord_ admits it! What else do we need? What sort of proof do we need? He deserves to spend the rest of his wretched life in Azkaban!"  
  
"Then so does anyone who tortured people in the Ministry during the reign of Pius Thicknesse as Minister," said Harry. He didn't sound interested in the words he was saying, or in the way that Ollondors folded her arms and tried to stare him down. "You can bring in all sorts of witnesses, even ones closely related to them, who will say that they tortured, and not because they were under the Imperius Curse. And half the student population of Hogwarts deserves to go to Azkaban."  
  
"Careful, Mr. Potter," Ollondors breathed. "You are treading a very fine line."  
  
"No," Harry said, and in the motion of his neck, the stubborn lift of his chin, Draco saw the support he had been missing. "I agree that Draco should be tried for his crimes. But it should be a  _fair_ trial. And tell me this, Madam Ollondors. Except from me or my vassals and friends, where are you going to get the details of the crimes that you need in order to condemn Draco? Professor Snape is the one who needs to testify about Draco's attempts to kill the Headmaster and let Death Eaters into Hogwarts from the Death Eater side; he's the only Death Eater witness on our side that you have. My friends and I are the ones who can tell you about the murder attempts on me and the attempt to capture me. I will provide that information, and counsel Professor Snape to provide the same. But you can't arbitrarily assign punishment to Draco that he doesn't merit under the law. If different incidents of torture have different punishments, then he should receive the one that he merits. Not the one that you want to decide on because of his family name or his Dark Mark or anything else."  
  
The courtroom was tense, silent, full of quiet breathing. Ollondors seemed too enraged to speak, at least from the way she was puffing.  
  
Then Jenkyns said, "Well. We have to go through this farce of a trial in the first place to get the details. So why don't you tell us what you saw of the torture sessions, Mr. Potter, and we can use that to decide on the punishment?"  
  
For the first time, Harry smiled.  
  
 _He's using Jenkyns and Ollondors against each other,_ Draco realized abruptly.  _He can't get me out of spending some time in Azkaban, but he can get me out of spending six years there just because Ollondors hates my family._  
  
It relaxed him more than he should, to know that the trial would be fair, and his Lord would be fighting for him. He hated the thought of going to Azkaban, but at least he probably wouldn't be Kissed.  
  
And the mere thought of having someone in his corner, someone who would fight for him and support him even if he was in prison, made hope flare bright in his chest.


	54. The Malfoys, Day Two

Harry took such a long drink of water that he heard Kreacher squeaking in concern beside him, and Ron and Hermione were exchanging glances by the time he lowered the glass. He shrugged. “My throat hurts.” There was no reason for it  _not_ to hurt, when he had spent all that time today talking, telling the details of the visions he had seen of Voldemort ordering Draco to torture people.  
  
 _Bloody Voldemort._  
  
“I believe you,” said Hermione, giving him a quick smile, and reaching out to squeeze his hand. “It’s just…Harry, did you  _have_ to call Madam Ollondors a busybody?”  
  
Harry snorted and rolled his head on his neck. They both ached. “She can’t hate me any more than she does for supporting Malfoys. My trial is past, my punishment assigned. And she can’t hate the Malfoys any more than she does, either.”  
  
Hermione and Ron held another frowning contest. Harry leaned forwards with his hands loosely clasped on the table in front of him. “Okay. Out with it, you two.” They were acting as though they knew something he didn’t. They’d been acting that way since they got back from the Ministry. It was driving him mental.  
  
“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Ron said slowly. “You said that you were going to fight as hard as you could to keep Malfoy from going to Azkaban, but then you agreed at the trial that you would let him go. And then you gave the testimony that condemned him. What gives, mate?”  
  
Harry gave Ron a hard smile. “I realized I can’t keep Draco out of Azkaban. And I’m giving the testimony that condemns him, sure. The extremely  _hard_ and  _clear_ and  _detailed_ testimony that tells  _exactly_ what he did on the torture charge.”  
  
Ron thought about it, then shrugged. “I thought you were doing that, but I don’t think that Malfoy appreciates the difference between you making sure that he doesn’t serve a longer sentence and you making sure that he serves a sentence at all.”  
  
“That’s because I haven’t talked to him yet,” Harry said, and gulped once more from the water glass before he put it down and stood up. “Will you excuse me?”  
  
Ron and Hermione exchanged one of those glances that Harry didn’t always understand, the kind that they gave each other more often since they had got together. But he didn’t mind it that much. He knew  _they_ didn’t always understand what the bond was like from the inside, or why he had to relate to his vassals the way he did, but they put up with it. The least he could do was the same for them.  
  
“All right,” Hermione murmured. “But be careful how you explain it. I think he’s already starting to question how much he trusts you, and you don’t want him going too far into distrust.”  
  
“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry said, grinning at her, and went to find Draco.  
  
*  
  
 _I’m going to Azkaban._  
  
Draco had repeated the sentence so many times to himself now that it was starting to lose its meaning. He tasted the shapes of the words in his mouth, and felt the shape of the Dark Mark on his arm as though it was echoing them. He tried to remember how he had felt when he took the Mark, his  _reasons_ for taking it, but the hatred for Harry and the desire for vengeance had been burned out of him. There was only the flat, ash-laden despair that came with the thought of being in Azkaban.  
  
“The Dementors are no longer at the prison,” his mother had tried to tell him. “You’ll be spared that, at least.”  
  
But she looked at his father with desolate eyes as she spoke, and Draco knew that she either didn’t believe what she was saying, or she was dividing her focus between them. She might be joining them in prison, but they didn’t know that yet; she didn’t have as many enemies. So they had to wait and see.  
  
It was a relief when Harry knocked on the door of his parents’ bedroom, and although Lucius and Narcissa both stiffened and turned their heads slightly to the side, Draco reached out to him. Harry came over, took his arm with the shield mark on it, nodded slightly to his parents, and led Draco outside.  
  
Once they were in the corridor, Harry turned to him. Draco looked at him in silence, not knowing if he could speak any words other than the ones that had been echoing through his head all day.  
  
“You understand why I’m testifying against you?” Harry whispered.  
  
Draco nodded and took a deep breath. Even that fear, which had been so present at first, had retreated against the reality of his going to prison. “To make sure that I’m tried for what my crimes were, not what people think they are.”  
  
Harry gave him a strong, warm smile. “That’s right. And if you do get condemned to Azkaban, I’ll come and visit you every week.”  
  
Draco blinked and shook his head. He still felt a little stunned and bewildered, but he was thinking one thing. “How can you? You’ll be under house arrest. I was conscious for  _that_ part of the trial, at least,” he added dryly.  
  
“Yes, but I can leave the house with an Auror escort,” Harry said peacefully. “And they’ll need to let me out to testify at other Death Eater trials and to attend the celebrations that I’m sure the Ministry wants to throw for the end of the war. I’m going to make trouble unless I get to visit you in Azkaban, too.”  
  
Draco put on a smile he thought was watery, and closed his eyes. “I don’t suppose you know how many years in Azkaban I’m going to have yet?” he whispered.  
  
“No,” Harry said, his voice so gentle that Draco found himself nodding along before he even thought about it. “Sorry. I don’t. They didn’t even settle it today how many months you should have for the torture, remember, and they still have to hear the testimony on your other crimes.”  
  
“I know I did wrong things,” Draco whispered, unsure why he was even saying this. It wasn’t like he had to. Harry  _knew_ all this. But maybe he needed the shape of different words in his mouth. “But I don’t want…I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in Azkaban.”  
  
“I don’t think it will be the rest of your life,” Harry said. “And it’s not going to be the Kiss.” He hesitated. “If they say that you should have some other punishments, like monitoring charms on your wand after your stay in Azkaban is over, would you take that?”  
  
“I have to take whatever they hand out.” Draco just felt numb by now. He would have fought against that a while ago, but now he knew that Harry was doing all he could, and he would have to go along with what happened.  
  
“I know, but Jenkyns might propose other punishments just because he hates Ollondors and he’s going to oppose whatever she suggests,” Harry said, and hugged Draco so hard that Draco could feel Harry’s heart laboring against  _his_ chest. “He hates me, too, so he won’t let you walk away, but he might say that you should have monitoring charms and a shorter stay in Azkaban instead of the longer one she wants. Or something like that.”  
  
“You have a plan,” Draco breathed against his neck.   
  
“Not to get you out of Azkaban permanently,” Harry said. “I’m sorry. But something that might spare you from more than a few years there, yes.”  
  
Draco was in freefall. There were so many emotions mixed up in him, hope and despair and anger and worry and longing for it to be  _over_ so that he would know what was going to happen to him, that he thought he could happily sacrifice everything for an end to the crisis. “Then yes. Do what you have to.”  
  
Harry hugged him fiercely, again, and led him back to his parents. Draco sat down with his hand in his mother’s, and sighed.  
  
*  
  
“We are ready now to decide on the sentence that Draco Malfoy should receive for the torture of numerous Death Eaters.”  
  
Harry just sat back in his chair and folded his arms. He had done what he could, telling Ollondors and the rest of the Wizengamot about the torture sessions he had seen through the link with Voldemort. Draco had never held them under the curse for long, but he had used the Cruciatus and other curses that Voldemort told him to.  
  
It made Harry’s chest burn that plenty of  _other_ people in the Ministry would get away with being ordered by Death Eaters to torture people, because they weren’t politically important and didn’t have fathers who were criminals. But this was the situation they were stuck in, and at least he knew what was going to happen when Ollondors made the proposal she had  _owled_ to tell him she would make. Harry thought that was probably a violation of courtroom procedure, to tell him which way she would vote beforehand, but it wasn’t like anything else about these trials had been regular, either.  
  
“I propose that Draco Malfoy spend the rest of his life in Azkaban,” said Ollondors, exactly the way she had phrased it in the letter to Harry.  
  
None of the other Wizengamot members said anything. Ollondors had kept her gaze away from Jenkyns and the part of the Wizengamot he was seated in, anyway, but she did appear disconcerted when the people she was looking at stayed silent.  
  
“Does no one agree with me?” she finally asked.  
  
The Carrow cousin who had objected to talking about Alecto and Amycus as if they were torturers stood up, and Harry tensed. But she only said, “If we punish him that way, with a life sentence right away, nothing else we can sentence him to would have any impact,” and then sat down.  
  
“We could do something else as well as the life sentence,” said Ollondors, turning to stare at Jenkyns now. “Snap his wand. Make sure that we drain the money from his vaults.  _Something_.”  
  
Jenkyns gave Ollondors a long, slow, bored look. “Draco Malfoy doesn’t own enough money in his vaults to be worth taking,” he said. “ _That_ particular punishment should be reserved for his father.” He eyed Lucius for a moment. Harry looked at Lucius, too, but it didn’t surprise him to see Lucius matching the expression on Jenkyns’s face. “But I agree that we could snap his wand.” Then he yawned. “But on top of a life sentence in Azkaban? Really? When no one else in the cases that Barrister Changes recited for us has ever been assigned that for torture?” He sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t do.”  
  
Ollondors was rigid with hatred. She turned to Harry. “I suspect that  _you_ think he shouldn’t be assigned it, either?”  
  
“I think,” Harry said mildly, “that he should receive the punishment of eighteen months in Azkaban that Barrister Changes discussed yesterday. That was for someone in the first war, an Auror, who had also tortured Death Eaters with curses he wasn’t allowed to use at the time. That Auror said he was in fear for his life while on an undercover mission and had to torture Death Eaters so he wouldn’t be suspected. The fear of consequences is much the same as in Draco Malfoy’s case. Yes, I think that should be the punishment.”  
  
“You would,” Ollondors whispered.  
  
Harry just shrugged at her. Honestly, was that worth saying? Yes, he thought that Draco should get that punishment. It wasn’t the least he could have received, but a life sentence for crimes that  _other people in the Ministry_ had committed and were going to get away with wasn’t fair, either.  
  
Ollondors did some more glaring, then turned to Jenkyns. “You would vote with me for a sentence of eighteen months in Azkaban?” she asked, and honestly, their power plays were naked now.  
  
“A sentence of eighteen months,” said Jenkyns, and gave Ollondors a smile that made Harry think he was enjoying this—the way Ollondors was asking him, more than anything else. “Nothing more than that.” He glanced around. “What do others think?”  
  
There was some more vague muttering and gestures; most of them seemed afraid to commit themselves. Harry exchanged a glance with Changes. She had told him that this would probably happen. Citing legal precedent meant that the Wizengamot wasn’t the one actually making the decision, only agreeing or disagreeing with what had been presented to it by someone else. There were a lot of them who were happy to go along with what wouldn’t get them in trouble.  
  
“And no one wants a life sentence,” Ollondors said, shaking her head. “Has Malfoy bribed all of you?”  
  
“Frankly, I’m tired of looking at their faces,” said a thin woman with white hair who stood up and leaned on a stick—a real one, Harry thought, not the staff that Jenkyns had used to threaten Pansy. “I want to go on to the next trial. My nephew’s in that one. I’m looking forward to giving him a right good thumping.” She sat down to laughter.  
  
Ollondors sighed. “Then the vote for eighteen months in Azkaban on the torture charge is secure?”  
  
A few people didn’t hold up their hands or say anything, but there was a chorus of mutters and waving wrists. Harry turned and glanced at Draco, nodding a little. He didn’t know if he could actually feed emotional strength through the bond when they were this far apart, but he tried.  
  
Draco caught sight of him and gave him a sick little smile. As long as he wasn’t collapsing, Harry thought he was holding up fine. He didn’t think  _he_ would be that calm if he’d just heard himself sentenced to eighteen months in Azkaban. The lack of Dementors was about the only thing that could be said for it.  
  
“The next charge,” said Ollondors, “is the attempted murder of Albus Dumbledore, and the murder attempts that happened along the way, as well. Mr. Weasley?”  
  
Harry watched with his heart thumping but, he hoped, no emotion visible on his face as Ron stood up and made his way to the chair at the front of the courtroom. He and Ron hadn’t discussed this at all. Harry didn’t want to influence Ron one way or the other. He would have to be the one to make up his mind about what he wanted to say, and the way he would try to sway the Wizengamot.  
  
Ron sat down and studied Ollondors with an unsmiling expression. He really had grown up during their year on the run, Harry thought, and not physically.   
  
“What exactly happened when Draco Malfoy tried to murder you?” Ollondors asked, her voice soft. Harry snorted. Ron might testify to send Draco to Azkaban, but Ollondors was mistaken if she thought she would fool Ron by talking gently at him.  
  
“He poisoned some mead that Professor Dumbledore was supposed to receive,” said Ron, shaking his head. “I drank it, and I started to die, but Harry shoved a bezoar down my throat, and I came back to life.” He grinned at Harry. Harry grinned back. He had never felt more grateful for having the Half-Blood Prince’s book, despite all the trouble that it caused later.  
  
“There’s no doubt in your mind that it was Draco Malfoy who poisoned the mead?” Ollondors’s voice had picked up the pace a little. Harry wondered if the white-haired witch had poked her with her cane.  
  
“None,” Ron said firmly. “And no doubt that he was attempting to murder the Headmaster,” he added, maybe because he could see Ollondors’s mouth opening and knew that would be her next question. “I know everything because later, I heard about how he was trying to murder Dumbledore because You-Know-Who threatened his parents. So this was part of that.”  
  
Ollondors looked around as though making sure that no one else had questions, and then turned to Ron. “What punishment do you think Draco Malfoy should receive for attempting to kill you?”  
  
Ron’s expression turned mulish. “How come you didn’t ask the people he tortured that?” he demanded.   
  
“Because they are not here,” said Ollondors. “And because murder is a more serious crime than torture.”  
  
Ron watched her with a cynical gaze. Then he shrugged. “I think that it was a mistake. Malfoy’s always been a coward and not very good at getting revenge. Hell, the first year he was always attempting to get Harry in trouble, and he never managed it without getting in trouble _himself._ And in our third year, he dressed up as a Dementor and tried to get Harry to fall off his broom during a Quidditch match. His plans  _never_ work. He wasn’t trying to kill me, he was trying to kill Dumbledore, and I got in the way.”  
  
Harry breathed slowly, glancing at Draco out of the corner of his eye. Draco looked stunned, and something else was coming through the bond, too. Harry frowned. He didn’t like whatever it was. It was cold and slimy and sluggish.  
  
“His plan to let Death Eaters into the school worked,” said Ollondors.  
  
“Yeah, the exception that proves the rule.” Ron crossed his legs and rapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Most of the time, there’s no question that Malfoy couldn’t have killed me. He was aiming for a bigger target. Someone else could have drink that mead, but so could Professor Dumbledore.” His gaze went to Draco. “Not that that would have worked either, because Professor Dumbledore would just have found out about the poison and laughed it off, but Malfoy was getting desperate. I suppose he thought he should try  _anything_ just in case it worked.”  
  
Draco stood up hastily. “Permission to approach and speak to the Wizengamot?” he croaked, his eye twitching furiously.  
  
Harry stared at him. Ollondors stared at him. Changes stared at him, which worried Harry most of all, because this meant this wasn’t a strategy Draco had worked out with her.  
  
“Oh, let him,” said the white-haired witch. “At least it might be a little interesting.”  
  
Draco nodded hard enough that Harry winced from the sympathetic pain coming down the bond, and strode up to stand beside Ron. He didn’t look at him, but that not-looking itself was a symptom of all that he was feeling, Harry thought. Draco had never been able to ignore Ron like that when they were together.  
  
“I didn’t intend to kill  _Weasley_ ,” Draco began in a choked voice. “But I was trying to kill  _someone_ , and the poisoned mead would have hurt Professor Dumbledore if he took it. If he drank it, I mean,” he added, maybe suddenly remembering that the mead wasn’t a potion. “So—so Weasley is wrong about me not being good at anything. It was a perfectly  _sound_ plan.” He turned and glared at Ron.  
  
Ron looked at Harry instead of matching glares with Draco. Written plainly on his face was,  _And you’re trying to_ defend  _this idiot?_  
  
Harry had to admit that he was wishing for a convenient wall to bang his head against, himself. He tried to catch Draco’s gaze, but Draco was simply too focused on Ron and the Wizengamot to pay attention. He looked as though he was satisfied to have gone up there and announced his not complete incompetence at murder.  
  
“He’s a child,” said the white-haired witch, and she sounded more bored than ever. “I thought this trial was to sentence adults, not children.”  
  
“Mr. Malfoy is of age by wizarding law,” said Ollondors. She sounded pleased with herself. Well, she could be, Harry thought, after Draco had practically done some of her work  _for_ her. “That means that we can try him as an adult.”  
  
“How old was he when he committed these crimes?” the white-haired witch asked, and this time, it seemed that she had poked Ollondors with her cane, because Ollondors winced too hard for it to be a coincidence. “The ones we’re trying him for?”  
  
“Seventeen when I tortured people,” said Draco, and his face was purple, but fading to white. Maybe he was just beginning to realize how  _stupid_ he had been, Harry thought. “Sixteen when I was attempting to kill the Headmaster and letting Death Eaters into the school.”  
  
He fixed his eyes and, it seemed, his will on Ollondors, and Harry checked a sigh. Yes, he understood from the way Draco was looking now, all too well. Draco thought he was going to go to Azkaban for years anyway. But he wanted to be understood on his own terms. If they were going to sentence him for being a threatening criminal, then he wanted to show them that he actually had tried to threaten people.   
  
“Still a child,” said the white-haired witch. “Maybe legally responsible, but you’re a  _boy_ , Mr. Malfoy. Or Draco Malfoy. Mr. Malfoy is your father, isn’t he?”  
  
Harry thought he saw Lucius move out of the corner of his eye, but Draco snapped back at her before Lucius could say anything. “I’m an adult! You’re trying me as an adult! That means you have to treat me like one!”  
  
“I’ll treat people like adults when they behave like it,” said the white-haired witch, and heaved herself to her feet again so she could see Draco. “And I don’t think you’re acting like one. I have no time for children. This is a courtroom. That’s what I’m going to tell my nephew, when he’s in here. And if I’d tell my own nephew that, you can imagine what I’m going to say to  _you_.”  
  
“I’m  _not_ a child.” Draco sounded a little calmer now, but it was a grinding calm, Harry thought, wearing down on his nerves. “Do me the courtesy of accepting what’s going on here, and accepting the reality.”  
  
“No,” said the white-haired woman. “I don’t think I will. I think we should have a different punishment altogether, appropriate for angry  _children_ who get out of hand.” She glanced from side to side, and apparently saw enough interested faces to let her continue. Harry had no idea what she was talking about, himself. “As my name is Bronwen Mollevron, I demand that the Wizengamot consider the Stripping of the Wand for Draco Malfoy.”  
  
Draco shouted a wordless protest, and tried to surge forwards. Ron put out a hand. Draco came to a stop, maybe because he had an ingrained revulsion at the notion of touching a Weasley. Ron smirked at him and faced Mollevron. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that punishment before, madam,” he said. “Is it just breaking his wand?”  
  
Mollevron shook her head firmly. “It means taking his adulthood away from him. Making him a ward of the state—since his parents obviously can’t control him—for several years, until we declare that he’s legally arrived at adult status again. Taking his wand from him; only adults deserve wands. Taking away the freedom to move about unsupervised, or be out after a certain time, or date anyone his guardians don’t approve of.” She smiled at Draco. “Treating him like he acts.”  
  
Draco shouted again, but once again, there were no words in it. Harry stood up, wondering if he would have to go up there and restrain Draco this time. But Ron mouthed at him,  _I have this,_ and stood up, calmly, in front of Draco. It really did look like an adult holding back a child, Ron was so much more in control than Draco.  
  
“This upsets him, doesn’t it?” Ollondors asked, and her eyes were agleam. “Like an angry little boy.” She turned to look around her. “Members of the Wizengamot, I vote that we consider Madam Mollevron’s wise words.”  
  
Harry sat back, swallowing through a dry throat. He didn’t know if this would work out, or if Ollondors would only support the punishment as long as she thought it upset Draco.  
  
Then again, looking at Draco’s face, pale and flushed by turns, Harry thought it might  _really_ be the worst thing they could do to Draco, other than execute him.  
  
For the moment, Harry only could sit there and await the turn of events.


	55. The Malfoys, Day Three

The door to Draco’s room had been locked since they had got home from the Ministry two hours earlier.  
  
Harry sighed and knocked again, leaning against the wall when it became clear that Draco wasn’t going to open it. “I just want to talk to you,” he told the shut door. “Please? About what you said and why I supported what Madam Mollevron wanted? Please.”  
  
But Draco didn’t open it, and the emotions flowing through the bond flickered like fire strewn with salt. Harry reckoned that he wasn’t going to get a welcome either eavesdropping on Draco right now or trying to barge his way in. He finally turned his back and began to make his way down towards the kitchen.  
  
“When you’re ready to talk, I do want to talk to you,” he called to the door.   
  
It remained shut, and the bond all but silent. Harry sighed and made the rest of the journey, nearly jumping when he saw Greg waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. He’d been so involved in his head that anything that intruded from the outside felt startling.  
  
“Greg.” Harry mustered a smile for him, and reached out along the bond to feel Greg’s emotions. He was calmer than Draco, of course, but there was also a steadiness and a joy there, like a stone tower rising, that Harry had missed. Greg was the only one of his vassals who seemed really happy with the bond. Sometimes, Harry appreciated the reminder that he hadn’t fucked up everybody’s lives forever. “Can I do something for you?”  
  
Greg nodded. “I think that Professor Snape wants to talk to you about the trial today,” he said, and led Harry towards the library. Harry went with him, more resigned than ever. A conversation with Snape wouldn’t be much more enlightening than one with Draco; both of their emotions were pretty muted through the bond.  
  
“What’s wrong, my Lord?’  
  
Greg had stopped, and was looking at him. Harry hesitated, but as long as he didn’t expect Greg to solve his problems, he thought it was okay to talk about them. “I just don’t know how the trial will work out,” he said. “Draco resents me for the way things happened today, and I don’t know what Professor Snape will expect me to do.”  
  
“He shouldn’t expect you to do anything,” said Greg peacefully. Sometimes Harry would give a lot for that peace. “You’re not really his Lord. After the trials are over, he wants the bond dissolved.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “Yeah, but I’m still Draco’s Lord. And he’s expecting me to do something that will save Draco.”  
  
Greg looked a little lost. “Save Draco from Azkaban?”  
  
“I think so.” Harry knew there was no way that he could ever let Greg know about how Snape had been prepared to sacrifice him as long as nothing happened to Draco. “Or save him from suffering in general, maybe. Make sure that he doesn’t get Kissed. It could be lots of things.”  
  
Greg frowned in concentration. “Then you should go and talk to him, and see which it is.” And he resumed leading Harry to the library.  
  
Harry snorted to himself. He thought he had probably come too far in life to find the kind of peace that Greg did in obedience even if he tried to apply himself to it. He would resent being told what to do, and he’d want to go off and do things on his own.  
  
But he envied it anyway.  
  
*  
  
“Tell me what your plans are for getting Draco out of this situation.”  
  
Harry leaned back in his chair and looked at him with what Severus thought was unfair coolness. “The trial? I can’t get him out of the trial. I think the Stripping of the Wand that Madam Mollevron recommended really is the best option to fight for. They can punish him for his crimes that way, and feel like they’re punishing him all the more because it’s something he so obviously hates. But he won’t get Kissed, and he won’t go to Azkaban. They can’t send kids to Azkaban.”  
  
Severus half-shut his eyes. Any one of his Slytherins would have known what he meant instantly, and without the need for further explanation.   
  
But it was not as though he needed a further example that Potter was not one of his Slytherins.  
  
He held his breath until he thought he could calm down enough to speak without shouting, and then started again. “Not the trial. I know that the trial must go forwards. Going to Azkaban is what I meant. Combined with the Stripping of the Wand. Together, they would be a punishment too cruel for anyone to endure.”  
  
Harry said nothing for long enough that Severus wondered what objection he could raise against something so reasonable and believable. Then he said, “I already told you why they won’t both be happening. You don’t believe me?”  
  
Something in the quickness of Harry’s voice made Severus look at him hard, but Severus still ended up having to shake his head, because he did not understand. “You must get Draco out of both, not only one. He must not be—”  
  
“Punished?” Harry interrupted, with a little flash of his teeth that Severus did not like and did not know who had taught him. “I know that you swore an Unbreakable Vow to Narcissa to protect her son, but it doesn’t cover things like this, or you would already be dead.”  
  
Severus pushed down his frustration, everything that made him want to explode, and forced himself to consider the situation as though it was happening to someone else, as though he was reading the incident in a book about the war years later. What advice would he give to that person? What course would he shake his head at and declare foolish?  
  
“He did not commit enough crimes to deserve either punishment,” Severus finally said. “That is what I wish you would spare him.”  
  
Harry gave him a look like a hunting hawk, and Severus ground his teeth. He knew it was probably the bond that was giving Harry so many qualities that he didn’t have before, like the ability to make an effective argument, but that made it no less irritating to contend against.  
  
“He deserves  _some_ punishment,” Harry said softly. “If I received some for casting the Unforgivables and you got some even though you were on our side all along, then Draco deserves some. He didn’t go along willingly with everything, but he still did them, and he refused all the best efforts that you and Dumbledore made to help him.”  
  
“I cannot believe that you will hold that against him,” said Severus flatly. “What was he supposed to do? Jump for joy at the fact that we knew why he was risking himself?”  
  
“No, but he made the decision to take the Mark,” said Harry. “And everything else followed from that.”  
  
“Since when are you a Gryffindor paragon?” snapped Severus, and drew back his sleeve from his left arm. “When are you so unsympathetic to Marked Death Eaters?”  
  
“What you did for, you atoned by years of suffering and trying to make sure that you did the right thing,” Harry snapped back, and then shut his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Anyway. I’m not  _unsympathetic_ to Draco. I simply can’t go this far into the trial and then let Draco not receive any punishment. If you even think that I’m capable of influencing the Wizengamot to agree to that, you haven’t been paying attention the past few days.”  
  
Severus shut his eyes. From beyond his closed eyelids came Harry’s soft voice. “Why are you so determined to keep Draco from being punished, when you weren’t trying to keep Pansy or Greg from being punished?”  
  
“I failed him,” Severus whispered. “I made an Unbreakable Vow that I kept, as far as the letter of it went, but I failed in the spirit. I should have done something more to help Draco. I should have made sure that he was safe.”  
  
A hand touched his. Severus started and opened his eyes. Harry was shaking his head at him, and his eyes were unaccountably soft.  
  
“You can’t blame yourself for not perfectly fulfilling a vow that Narcissa forced you into,” Harry said. “Any more than you can blame yourself for fulfilling the vow that you made to Dumbledore but not having everything work out perfectly. I know that you did what you could to distract attention from some of the students at Hogwarts that the Death Eaters wanted to punish, but you couldn’t save all of them. That is  _not your fault_. I wish you wouldn’t think it was.”  
  
Severus opened his mouth, and found himself wordless. The words resonated with thoughts that he’d had, but he almost never dared voice them. They would sound ungrateful when it came to Albus, horrible when it came to Draco, a boy who more innocent than Severus however one looked at it.  
  
“So,” said Harry, standing up. “No, I won’t try to get Draco out of having any punishment at all. But I  _will_ make sure that it’s fair.” He looked at Severus with his eyes calm and clear. “Watch me tomorrow.”  
  
And he left the library, leaving Severus to stare at his hands, and realize that he had no idea what to do or say next.  
  
*  
  
“We have yet to determine whether it would be legal to send a child to Azkaban,” said Madam Mollevron, and sat down again. Harry thought she only stood at all, with the pain it obviously caused to her leg, because it would attract attention and make people focus on her for a little while.  
  
“It’s happened in other cases of the Stripping of the Wand,” said Ollondors. But she stood with her arms folded, and her glance at Changes showed that she wasn’t sure.  
  
“Only after the person in question had arrived back at legal adulthood,” said Changes. She had taken no part in the Wizengamot debates, except when someone asked her a question, the way they had now. She stood there with her eyes alert and passing from face to face. “Then they were sometimes sent to Azkaban for the original sentence, or the original sentence halved. It depended on how they had been treated when they were wards. If they had been treated poorly and locked up a great deal of the time, for example, that was sometimes considered to have substituted for the original punishment of a jail cell.”  
  
Harry sighed. He hadn’t got much done last night, between trying to talk to Draco (who never would talk to him, and had marched into the courtroom this morning between his parents, and without looking in Harry’s direction) and spending some necessary time with his friends. He needed their calmness and their steadiness to ground him.  
  
At least he had Ron’s word that he wouldn’t try to ask for more punishments if Draco was legally reduced to a child. In fact, Ron was  _hoping_ that the Stripping of the Wand happened, instead of him being sent to Azkaban, because he thought it would be so much more humiliating for Draco.   
  
Harry could foresee a lot of conflict in the future. Ron and Draco didn’t like each other, and never would. Ron resented Draco for almost killing him. Draco resented Ron for existing, maybe.  
  
But they had to worry about the trial in front of them first.  
  
“We could reconsider the Azkaban sentence when he’s an adult again,” said Ollondors, looking cheerful at the thought.   
  
“We could,” said Mollevron. “Maybe by then, the sight of his face wouldn’t bore me.” She looked at Draco, who glared back.  
  
“There comes the choice, of course, who we would pass the custody of young Mr. Malfoy to,” said Ollondors, and her eyes were on Harry.  
  
“Please make it someone who can respect Lordship bonds,” Harry said mildly. “I have a magical responsibility to him that I can’t give up, no matter who you choose.”  
  
Ollondors started. Harry smiled back at her. She had probably expected him to jump up and down clamoring to have guardianship of Draco. He would have if he’d had someone different trying the case, but Ollondors was determined to cross him in all sorts of ways. She wouldn’t want to let Harry have  _any_ say in Draco’s fate if she thought that was a good thing for Draco.  
  
It was too late to convince her that Harry despised Draco and didn’t want to protect him, of course. Harry had made it perfectly obvious all along that he did. But he could at least try to make sure Draco was comfortable, and he didn’t think that just taking charge of him  _or_ abandoning him to whatever guardian the Wizengamot chose would do that.  
  
“Rather,” said Ollondors, after a moment. “But you could give up the bond if you chose.”  
  
“Only if he asked me to,” said Harry. “I don’t think he will.”  
  
At that point, it seemed everyone in the courtroom turned and stared at Draco, and Harry allowed himself to look, too.  
  
Draco was standing up, as though his back had been too rigid to sit in his chair. He stared at Harry, and the breath huffed in and out of his lungs. Then he turned his head harshly to the right, and looked blindly at his parents. Harry saw Narcissa squeeze his hand and speak softly to him. It didn’t seem to help.  
  
“How would you feel about having a say in Draco Malfoy’s guardianship?” said Mollevron then. She had evidently decided it would hurt her feet less to stay in her chair and just point her stick at Harry. Harry reflexively tensed when she did that. “As his Lord, you should have _some_ say in what happens to him.”  
  
Harry looked at Draco again. Draco was giving him a blank mask that might or might not reflect what he really felt. And the emotions through the bond were running into the same frozen dam that they had yesterday. Harry sighed. He would have to go with his own instincts and his own ideas of what would be best for Draco.  
  
“I know that I want to keep him in the bond, as long as he wants it, too,” Harry said. “And I know that he probably can’t be committed to my guardianship, since I would be under house arrest at the time. But I want whoever takes charge of him not to hate him.”  
  
“The court will not look for guardians who  _like_ him,” Ollondors interrupted him.  
  
“But if you make him legally a child,” Harry said, letting his voice get a bit cold, “and that person you appoint mistreats him, that’s child abuse. And I will  _not_ stand for that.” He might have come to terms with his own abuse, but there was no way that he would stand by and watch it happen to someone else.  
  
Ollondors perhaps knew he could still cause trouble, in spite of all the horrible things that had been attributed to him during the past few weeks, because she scowled, but nodded. “We do have to find someone with a firm hand, though.”  
  
“As long as that doesn’t include cursing or beating him,” Harry said, “that’s fine.”  
  
“Are you  _ever_ going to let me talk for myself?”  
  
Harry glanced over his shoulder. Draco was standing up still, but facing Harry now, and his hands had tightened into fists.  
  
“Yes, of course, Mr. Draco Malfoy,” said Ollondors, her face bright with joy, “tell us what you would like. Not that it’ll matter, but we would all like to listen to the words of a torturer and a murderer.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, without caring who saw him. Was the Wizengamot ever neutral in a trial? Or did they praise the people they wanted to excuse as much as they blamed the people they wanted to condemn?  
  
Draco ignored Ollondors as much as she was ignoring Harry at the moment. He walked, vaguely, to the front of the courtroom, but he was really closer to Harry. And staring at him all the time.  
  
Harry looked indifferently back. Well, as indifferent as he could be to one of his vassals who was in danger. He wanted to hear what Draco had to say, but he also knew that it was probably not going to help the trial. And why Draco blamed Harry instead of the Wizengamot, enough to send the freezing hostility that was occluding the bond right now, he didn’t know.  
  
Maybe he would get to hear it.  
  
*  
  
 _Harry. How can you do this? You must realize that the Stripping of the Wand would be the worst thing they could do to me. Not Azkaban._  
  
Draco realized that he hadn’t actually said that, because they’d only brought up the Stripping of the Wand yesterday and he hadn’t talked to Harry since then, but Harry had seemed to know him pretty well during their conversations. There was no reason for him to go off and pretend that he didn’t during the rest of the trial.  
  
“I don’t want the Stripping of the Wand,” he said, looking at Harry more than the Wizengamot. “Azkaban would be better than that. At least Azkaban would show that you recognize me as a—as an adult, someone you can respect.” And maybe he was talking more to Harry than the Wizengamot at the moment, but Mollevron and Jenkyns and the rest would just have to put up with that. “I don’t want to be stripped of my wand and my adulthood for years and years. Years in Azkaban would be better.”  
  
“Why?” asked Mollevron, looking bored. “They would both last years.”  
  
Draco turned to her, and ignored the hissed warning that his mother sent at his back. If she couldn’t understand why this was so important to Draco, then she would just have to put up with it, too.  
  
“Because this would be  _humiliating_ ,” he said. “You don’t humiliate people that you sentence to Azkaban. You acknowledge that they’re dangerous and they need to be kept away from the rest of wizarding society. If that’s the way you think of me, fine! Or you can think of me as a coward who should have been able to resist—” He had planned the say the name, but his whole throat and stomach closed and rebelled against it. He managed, finally, to shake his head and spit out, “The Dark Lord, fine. I’m that, too. But I’m not a child. No one who has seen as much as I have could be a child.”  
  
He knew Harry was staring at him. He ignored that. Harry had already proven he didn’t know Draco all that well after all. Now it was his turn to listen, and maybe he would learn to know Draco from that.  
  
“But you don’t understand,” said Ollondors, and her voice—Draco didn’t think he should look at her face—had a soft, unholy glee. “If it’s the last thing you want, then that’s all the more reason we should do it. Because you should be  _punished_ for your crimes. You should not simply escape them.”  
  
Draco folded his hands together, low down, under the smooth drape of his robes. He was not going to burst out bawling or otherwise show them why he was upset. He was going to stand here and let some of their insults slide off him.  
  
“Azkaban would be worse,” he said. “Because it would torment me more to be alone in a room all the time with only guards to bring me food and no friendly visitors.” He caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, Harry’s head shaking, but he turned his head further to the side, and refused to look. “It would  _hurt_ me more. Do you want to hurt me, or do you want to humiliate me?”  
  
Ollondors was silent, maybe because she didn’t know. Mollevron leaned forwards. “We want to be done with you, and we want you to be quiet,” she said. “Or perhaps I should say, that’s what  _I_ want. But I’m an old woman, and I’m allowed to be selfish.”  
  
Draco bit his lip. Then he stopped. That was probably a childish gesture that would also make them think they shouldn’t take him seriously. But he had to do what he could to calm down and make them rethink what they were doing.  
  
“The Stripping of the Wand,” Ollondors said. “Should it be allowed to stand in for all his crimes? For the attempted murder and the attempted capture of Harry Potter during the Battle of Hogwarts? Or should it be combined with different punishments?”  
  
“I think it should be combined with different punishments,” said Jenkyns, and then frowned as if he didn’t know whether he was agreeing with Ollondors. He probably didn’t want to agree more than he wanted to punish Draco. Draco knew that was an insight he could have used in other circumstances, and he would have managed to manipulate his enemies against each other, as he thought Harry was trying to do.  
  
But he couldn’t listen to that cool little voice right now. He couldn’t listen to  _Harry_ right now. Harry wasn’t the one who was on trial for his life and freedom.  
  
“Different punishments,” said Draco, as calmly as he could. “And then you can shorten how long a time I’m without a wand, right? Because there might be some outrage if you put a child in prison, but there wouldn’t be anyone upset if you put an  _adult_ in prison.”  
  
Mollevron yawned at him and flipped one hand. “I’m growing tired of his voice,” she complained. “Is anyone else growing tired of his voice? I propose the Stripping of the Wand  _only_ , but to make the punishment five years. Unless Lord Potter wants to press for him to be charged with attempting to capture him…” She looked at Harry.  
  
“No,” Harry said quickly. “He didn’t succeed, and he ended up owing me a life-debt. The life-debt is all I want.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth to scream at him, but Mollevron spoke again. “Good. Then who is with me, for the lengthy Stripping of the Wand? And for custody for young Draco to be shared between his Lord, who would be legally responsible for him anyway no matter what happened, and an Auror appointed by the court?”  
  
“Why an  _Auror_?” Draco snapped, his head spinning. Most of the time, he thought, people forced to be children were given to members of the Wizengamot or other pure-blood families. “Why not one of you? Or one of the pure-blood families that survived the war?”  
  
“Most of them harbor just as many Death Eaters as yours does,” muttered Ollondors, her eyes glowing viciously.  
  
“She’s right,” said Mollevron. “And frankly, I wouldn’t trust most of  _us_ to do justice by you. I know that I wouldn’t. I’d hit you with my cane the first time you started whining, and that would be child abuse, as Lord Potter has rightfully pointed out to us.”  
  
“Could I make a suggestion?” Harry asked, and Draco, dazed and furious, wondered if this “suggestion” would make him want to hit Harry or not.  
  
“Yes?” Mollevron was tapping her cane on the ground again, but at least she wasn’t actually standing up.  
  
“You might want to try Auror Stone as Draco’s guardian,” said Harry. “She told me that she was launching investigations into Death Eaters among the Aurors, but she’s fair. She wouldn’t treat Draco with too much generosity, but she would also make sure that he wasn’t hurt or abused.”  
  
“That would be a good idea,” said Mollevron. “If he lives with you, sharing your house arrest, but Auror Stone is the one who makes any decisions about legal and financial matters that your bond does not force you to make? And she makes any decisions about when he can leave the house and with what escort, of course.”  
  
Harry took a deep breath. “I agree.”  
  
“It’s not  _your_ agreement that’s important,” Ollondors began.  
  
“Yes, it is,” said Mollevron. “If we’re asking him to take on part of the legal guardianship of the boy, it is. And the bond would demand some share, in any case. You can’t use the fact that he’s a Lord in some trials and ignore it in others,” she added with a cackle, probably because Ollondors was glaring at her.  
  
“You don’t need to ask him about the bond,” said Draco, “because I’m going to ask to be released from it as soon as possible.”  
  
“You can’t now,” said Mollevron, “unless your guardians think it’s a good idea. At least, if people agree with me that this is a good solution?”  
  
Hands rose and heads nodded all around the courtroom, and Draco, his heart crashing, heard Mollevron say, “Can we wait until tomorrow to try his parents, then? Lunch gave me wind.”


	56. The Malfoys, Day Four

“I want to talk to you.”  
  
Harry refrained from smiling. Draco would take that the wrong way. But this was  _so_ much better than the shut door and silence of yesterday, even when he could feel the emotions raging through Draco’s side of the bond, and they were bright, high, clear, curling waves. “Of course,” he said, and spent a moment brushing soot off his cloak so he wouldn’t scatter it throughout the house.  
  
“ _Now_ ,” Draco snapped, and turned away to lead Harry to whatever place he had found in the house that was comfortable for him.  
  
Hermione, Pansy, and Kreacher all opened their mouths at the same time, and those were only the ones Harry could see. He passed around a glare that he hoped would quiet all of them, then followed Draco.  
  
Draco didn’t actually lead Harry far away, the way Harry had thought he would. Instead, he seized Harry’s arm and whirled him into a room that had been filled with half-emptied boxes and crates when they arrived here. Harry thought it had been intended as a storage room, but the last of the Blacks to use it had changed their mind and moved some things out again.  
  
 _Never mind._ It had a door Draco could close and a bit of empty wall that he could press Harry up against, and he drew near with murder in his eyes.  
  
“How could you do that?” Draco whispered. “How could you support a punishment that was so humiliating for me, when you  _knew_ it was so humiliating for me?”  
  
“I thought it was better for you than going to prison,” Harry said. It was so simple to him, that reason, it was a little strange to watch Draco’s eyes widen. Well, and a little comical. He had to bite his lip so he wouldn’t smile. “That’s the only reason. I would have asked for the same punishment for you Pansy and I got, but there were circumstances like the fact that you’re a Marked Death Eater that made it impossible.”  
  
Draco’s hand tightened in his shirt. “If you think I wanted that…”  
  
“I’m talking about what other people believed, not what I believe or what’s true,” Harry interrupted. “ _Listen,_ will you? I think you would have been unhappy and upset in prison. You were panicked over the thought of being Kissed, but you were also panicked over the thought of going to Azkaban. If it makes you feel better, you still  _might_  go to prison when you’re legally adult again. They left that open as an option.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes. “Why wouldn’t anyone let me take responsibility for what I did when they were trying me based on that idea?” he whispered. “I don’t understand.”  
  
“Because they don’t care about you, they only care about their vengeance or their boredom,” Harry said quietly. Even Madam Mollevron wasn’t an ally of his, only someone who had made the situation more bearable for Harry. “And what I care about is you maintaining some degree of freedom.”  
  
“You think  _this_ does it?” Draco’s eyes were wide open, and nearly hysterical.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry firmly. “The same way that house arrest still gives me a degree of freedom. Not much, and what I can do is really restricted. But still some. Still better than the term in Azkaban they used to give people who used the Unforgivable Curses.”  
  
“What if  _I_ went back to them and said that I wanted to go to Azkaban, that I think Ollondors’s vengeance would be better than your bloody protectiveness?” Draco snapped, but he sounded as if he was choking.  
  
Harry sighed and reached out to place his hands on Draco’s shoulders. “They wouldn’t listen to you. They would ask me or Auror Stone if we thought you were ready. She might give her consent, but I wouldn’t.”  
  
Draco broke away from him and launched a violent kick against the other wall. Harry winced as he heard something shatter. At least he thought it was slats in a crate and not Draco’s foot. He would have felt a lot more pain through the bond if it was that, he thought.   
  
“Why do you think the Stripping of the Wand is so much better for me?” Draco whispered, back still turned. “If you could feel my emotions through the bond, you should know better than anyone what I really wanted.”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said. “And I know that the thought of being Kissed or even going to Azkaban for only eighteen months left you in this state of blind, unreasoning panic. Shock, maybe. Now I know you’re feeling anger, and that you want your desires respected. But rage is better than shock.”  
  
Draco turned around, his eyes a bit wild. “I understand now. It’s all about  _you_ , isn’t it? It’s all about what will make  _you_ uncomfortable and comfortable! You don’t want me in Azkaban because you could feel what I feel, and that would upset you!”  
  
“I can feel what you feel either way,” Harry said steadily. “I really do think that this is better for you, Draco. You wouldn’t be able to use magic or go anywhere without supervision in Azkaban either, you know. And I don’t think most of the Auror guards or whoever else works there would really respect you.”  
  
Draco looked away from him and said something in so deep and vicious a tone that Harry wasn’t sure what it was. Then he clenched his fingers down into his hands and said, “I think that you should have let me be an adult.”  
  
“I didn’t tell Greg it was a good idea,” said Harry. He did find a bit of bitter irony in the fact that Severus had so badly wanted for him to sacrifice Greg to save Draco. Did them both getting the same treatment satisfy him now? “Why is it such a good thing for him to be treated as someone dependent but not for you?”  
  
*  
  
Draco didn’t even need to search his mind for the answer to that question. It was right there, pounding along at the forefront of his brain and throat with his heart and all the feelings that Harry should be able to sense and figure out.  
  
“Because I’m  _different_ than Greg,” he blurted out. “Because he wanted a Lord but I didn’t, and I want to be independent and stand on my own someday.”  
  
Harry’s eyes softened. He still didn’t apologize, and Draco found that infuriating. If he could sense how badly Draco hated this, what reason  _could_ there be to keep him from apologizing?  
  
“Someday,” Harry said. “That won’t be a problem. And I’ll do all that I can to make sure I respect your decisions and what you want while you’re my ward. And Auror Stone might not do exactly the same thing, but she won’t be as mean as you’re probably expecting. She does understand about the limits of a Lordship bond.”  
  
“I know that,” Draco said, and his voice sounded grating and broken even in his own throat, which was annoying. He ought to be able to sound firm and confident while he faced the destroyer of his freedom, at least. “But I didn’t  _want_ this.”  
  
Harry’s hands tightened on him. “And you didn’t want to be made into a torturer by the Dark Lord, either,” he whispered. “I know, Draco. I’m sorry. And you didn’t want to be a Death Eater after you found out what it really involved. I’m sorry. This is just the best solution I could think of.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes. “I could have endured Azkaban. I don’t want anyone to think that I was trying to avoid it because of that, because I was weak.”  
  
“There are lots of people who don’t want to go to Azkaban,” said Harry, sounding blankly surprised. “Why  _wouldn’t_ someone try and avoid it?”  
  
Draco shook his head. “What matters is what people think of me. I don’t want people thinking I’m  _weak_. You should be able to see that. You should,” he added, when he opened his eyes and found Harry still standing there with the blank expression on his face. “You of all people. You know how many lies the wizarding public likes to make up about you.”  
  
“And I’m learning that they  _don’t matter_ ,” Harry said, as if he was explaining to an idiot. Draco opened his mouth to complain about being treated like that, but Harry had bulled on ahead. “They’re calling me an evil and cruel Lord and saying that I must be raping the lot of you, did you read that? That’s not the  _Prophet_ itself, that’s some pamphlet that the Freedom Fighters probably published, but the  _Prophet_ is still reporting on it, and there’s some people that won’t make a difference to. But I’m not running around and saying they need to take all of you away from me in case some stupid people  _do_ think I’m hurting you. I’m ignoring it. Why can’t you do the same?”  
  
Draco tried to speak, to talk about all the ways that people had looked at him when he joined the Death Eaters, how Fenrir Greyback had laughed at him, how his parents had always taught him to be strong, how he needed to have some of his pride back.  
  
But it was too much, and he choked on it. He shook his head. Finally he muttered, “Just accept that it’s different for me than for you. I want to go to Azkaban and I want the respect of my enemies. Can you  _give_ me that, please? Please? Can you go back and tell them that the Stripping of the Wand is too harsh and you want me in prison instead?”  
  
“Telling Ollondors that would just make her more likely to enforce the Stripping of the Wand,” said Harry. “That’s the way she works. She wanted the harsh punishment.”  
  
“Then tell her that you’ve changed your mind, and it’s Azkaban that’s harshest,” Draco said. “ _Please_.”  
  
And Harry changed in front of his eyes. The softness vanished from the corners of his face, and he drew himself upright and stared at Draco. Draco blinked. He didn’t know what was going on, why Harry looked that way, but even the emotions flowing through the bond had changed. They were harsh and grinding now, like a huge glacier cutting down the front of a mountain.  
  
“It’s about time you grew up,” Harry said. “Everyone’s worked as hard as they can to make sure that you won’t suffer too much—except the people who actually hate your family, like Ollondors, and we’ve tried to make sure they go along with it because it’s best for you. And your parents are the ones who’re facing their trial tomorrow. I’d think you’d care more about what they want and what they’re going to suffer than your own pride.”  
  
Draco tried to say that he cared about both things at once, that it wasn’t  _impossible_ the way Harry was making out, but the words stuck in his throat. In stunned silence, he watched as Harry opened the door.  
  
“I’m trying to be sympathetic,” Harry said over his shoulder. “I know that you want to be seen as an adult and not a child. But when you constantly  _act_ like a child, well, it gets hard not to see you that way.”  
  
He slipped out of the storage room. Draco stood there in silence, concentrating, reaching down the bond. It had stopped being a glacier, but it was still smooth and cold and not particularly welcoming.  
  
Draco swallowed. He wanted to follow Harry and complain again, but he knew at least one thing was true. That wouldn’t make Harry think better of him, or anyone else. He would probably end up being ignored again.  
  
So he went to find his parents. At least he knew they would always care what happened to him.  
  
*  
  
“Look at Malfoy twisting his face up, the little git.”  
  
Harry just shrugged when Ron whispered the words into his ear. Today had been a long parade of witnesses, since Lucius and Narcissa weren’t his vassals and the crimes they were charged with were rather different. Mostly it was people who had seen Lucius in his Death Eater guise, or suffered under his wand, or seen him baiting Muggles. Other people were volunteering information on how Narcissa had acted as hostess to the Dark Lord, including Ollivander.  
  
Ollivander had just stepped down from the witnesses’ stand, leaning on Luna’s arm, when the summons Harry had been expecting came. Ollondors looked at him and beckoned directly into his face. “I understand that you have important information on Narcissa Malfoy to offer, Lord Potter.”  
  
Harry stood up and walked over, ignoring the way that curious and hopeful Malfoy eyes fastened on him from the left. He would tell exactly what he had seen, no more and no less. At this moment, he had no idea what the outcome of Lucius and Narcissa’s trial was going to be. He was trying to smooth himself down into not caring, the way he had with the public reaction.   
  
He only knew that Narcissa had saved his life, and he was going to talk about that.  
  
“Incredible as it seems,” Ollondors said when he was seated, “people are saying that Narcissa Malfoy lied to You-Know-Who to save your life. Is that true?”  
  
“It’s true,” said Harry, and clasped his hands and gave Ollondors his calm, wide eyes. “Voldemort told some to make sure that I was dead. He could have done it to anyone, and if someone else, like Bellatrix Lestrange, had done it, I would have died in the next few seconds. But Narcissa walked over and put a hand on my chest and asked if Draco was alive. I told her that he was. She told Voldemort I was dead. He decided that I was and that he would have Hagrid carry me into Hogwarts.”  
  
Some of the Wizengamot stirred and murmured, but Harry didn’t know if that was over his story or his use of Voldemort’s name or something else. His gaze remained on Ollondors, who frowned, as if she hadn’t anticipated that answer.  
  
 _Surely you have spies,_ Harry thought towards her in contempt.  _Surely someone’s told you by now what happened, and you could compare my story with theirs if you were really puzzled about it. Sometimes you don’t act as if you were actually that smart._  
  
“I find it hard to believe that You-Know-Who would be fooled by such a simple stratagem,” said Ollondors. “Why didn’t he check on you himself?”  
  
Harry snorted and waved one hand. “Who can say? It might be because he was lazy, or because he knew that I’d survived a Killing Curse before and he was wary about coming too close to me. But he wasn’t that bright in general, you know. He’d been insane for a long time.” No force on earth except saving one of his friends or his vassals was going to make Harry talk too directly about the Horcruxes. “And he was surprised when he thought I’d come back to life and leaped out of Hagrid’s arms. That was the only thing that mattered.”  
  
“And a few minutes later, your accidental bond happened,” Ollondors muttered, peering over his shoulder as if she expected his vassals to tell her something.  
  
Harry bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh in her face. Was she going to suggest some conspiracy theory related to  _that_? “Yes,” he replied, and made his eyes wide and innocent again, and his face as innocently puzzled. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, though.”  
  
“I simply wonder whether Narcissa Malfoy said something else to you,” said Ollondors, and leaned forwards. “Something that related to her son. To the safety of her son. She was willing to lie to her own Lord for you, and that suggests that she must value the safety of her son very highly.”  
  
“She does,” said Harry, without turning a hair. If he stuck to the truth, not even the Wizengamot would be able to find much in the way of material to condemn him.  
  
“And she must have known, if she lived through the war and he did, too, that he would need someone to protect him from the scrutiny and the accusations to come,” Ollondors persisted, her eyes bright. “I wonder if she arranged in some way for you to take that curse from You-Know-Who and transform it into the bond. I think it likely.”  
  
“How many more arguments and magical experts do we have to bring in to suggest to you that the bond was accidental?” Jenkyns sounded thin and exasperated. Harry saw Mollevron shut her jaw and nod firmly. She had been about to say something, he thought, but she didn’t see the need to intervene if Jenkyns would say it for her. “There’s no way that Mrs. Malfoy could have set up something so strange and unprecedented, merely to protect her son. I know that you think Malfoys are capable of anything, but this is the utter limit.”  
  
“She has done worse than that before,” said Ollondors, her chin going up. “Why else would she be willing to take such a huge risk as to lie to her  _own_ Lord? She had to know that there was a reward waiting somewhere in the wings, and it made sense she would want to bargain with both sides. If Lord Potter won, then she would have her son as the vassal of the Savior of the Wizarding World.” Harry frowned. He didn’t dislike that name quite as much as everyone else seemed to dislike the name Voldemort, but it was up there. “If You-Know-Who won, then she would be rewarded for telling him about Lord Potter’s death.”  
  
“But if he had won, it wouldn’t have been because I lay there and played dead until I could escape or someone killed me on accident,” Harry pointed out. He didn’t think Ollondors was this stupid, really. It was her grudge against the Malfoys tricking or forcing her into groping for more and more outlandish theories. “I would have tried to kill him and been killed in turn. And he would have known that Mrs. Malfoy lied. So she could only gamble one way, and she chose to do it because I told her the truth about Draco. That’s the real point. She loved her son, but she couldn’t keep him absolutely safe all the time. She helped the person who told her that he was safe  _right now_. That’s it. That’s the only truth.”  
  
“It makes sense to me,” said Mollevron, not standing up this time but peering around the head of the person in front of her at Harry. “I’m glad that  _something_ does.”  
  
Ollondors spent a short time trading glares with Mollevron, but seemed to realize that was a contest she would never win, and turned back to Harry with a little sniff. “You can’t prove that she didn’t know the bond would form.”  
  
“I can say it’s extremely unlikely,” Harry countered. “And unless we’re going to start that whole saga of proving the bond accidental all over again, then I think that it’s a verdict you have to accept. Honorable Wizengamot Member,” he added, and showed all his teeth when Ollondors looked as if she  _still_ might argue.  
  
Ollondors eyed him. Harry eyed her back.  
  
Finally, Ollondors gave an explosive snort and waved her hand. “Fine. Mrs. Malfoy was never Marked, and she acted as a hostess to You-Know-Who in the sense that she was usually in the house with him.” She looked at Narcissa, but Narcissa had only spoken in response to direct questions—the smartest thing she could have done, Harry thought—and didn’t say anything now. Ollondors sighed longingly, but as Harry had thought was likely, she didn’t hate someone born a Black as much as someone born a Malfoy. “We will now vote on the fates of the elder Malfoys.”  
  
Draco seemed to have stopped breathing. Harry tried to send strength and warmth flowing through the bond, picturing it as an open channel with water splashing through it. If Draco felt that, he didn’t deign to give Harry any sign.  
  
“I suppose no one can doubt that Mr. Lucius Malfoy escaped from Azkaban, was a Marked Death Eater, baited Muggles during the war, broke into the Department of Mysteries, attacked Hogwarts students, gave Ginny Weasley a diary that nearly consumed her soul, and tortured numerous wizards?” Ollondors was on her feet, turning in a slow circle to catch the eyes of everyone near her.  
  
No one spoke up in response. Ollondors paused, then seemed to realize that had to do with her phrasing of her question. “Fine,” she said. “Do we  _vote_ that he is guilty of these crimes and deserves at least the minimum sentence of thirty years in Azkaban?”  
  
Harry blinked for a second, wondering why Ollondors wasn’t going for more than that. But then he sighed. Right. This was only the Azkaban part of the sentencing. Ollondors probably knew it would hurt Lucius more if they also took his money and his family prestige, as much as that was possible, and so she was being  _comparatively_ lenient on the Azkaban sentence so she could take more vaults.  
  
Hands went up all over the room. “Congratulations, sir,” Mollevron called down to Lucius. “At least your crimes are more interesting than your son’s.”  
  
There was no sign Lucius had heard. He sat still, and his eyes were fixed somewhere between Harry’s face and Draco’s. Harry half-snorted. If Ollondors was hoping for some sign of demonstrativeness from him as he was sentenced, she would have to wait all day. Fear for his fate was the last pleasure he could deny his enemies, and he would deny them all the pleasure he was capable of.  
  
“Now,” said Ollondors, and her voice was soft and she looked as though she was clasping her hands together like she was praying. Harry had to look away. Her face appeared very similar to Aunt Petunia’s during times when she was gossiping about one of the neighbors. “We need to think about what sort of reparations we should demand from you, sir. To that end, I have asked one of the goblins of Gringotts to come here with a detailed accounting.”  
  
A goblin Harry hadn’t seen before rose from a chair at the far end of the room. It had been sheltered behind Ollondors’s, Harry realized, so that it was hard to see with a direct line of sight. He wondered if Ollondors had meant that to make it harder for Lucius, so he would blink or swallow or catch his breath or  _something_.  
  
But Lucius’s gaze remained blank and fixed as the goblin began to read off numbers. Harry winced a little as he heard them. He knew that he had a lot in his own vault, the one his parents had left him, but this was incredibly more. It seemed Lucius had used those bribes and “donations” and inherited money and whatever else he had got well.  
  
Draco was the one standing with bowed head and clenched fists by the time the goblin had finished. Ollondors gave him what for her was a friendly smile. “Excellent. Now, I think that the amount of trouble the Malfoys have caused the Ministry justifies seizing at least half of that, don’t you?”  
  
The bickering that broke out then astonished Harry. Most of the Wizengamot hadn’t seemed that interested in the Malfoys’ fate, following Ollondors’s lead or just grateful they weren’t the ones being called to account for what they had done when Death Eaters took over the Ministry. But when it came to money, they could be loud, and contentious.  
  
Narcissa Malfoy leaned in and spoke one more time to Draco. This time, he turned his head, eyes bright and hopeless as they fastened on Harry.  
  
 _Listen to me,_ Harry thought as strongly as he could, even though he knew he would have discovered by now if the bond could convey thoughts. He sent warmth down it instead.  _No matter what happens, you’ll always have a home with me. You can stay in the bond as long as you like. I’ll provide for you._  
  
Draco blinked at him, but his eyes didn’t show much recognition of what Harry was sending. Harry kept looking at him, though, even when the Wizengamot seemed to come to agreement about how much money they’d take from the Malfoys. It was a long time. That didn’t matter. What mattered was Draco.  
  
“So the Malfoys shall lose two-thirds of the wealth in their Gringotts vaults,” said Ollondors, her voice like the purr of a pleased cat. “And Lucius Malfoy shall spend thirty years in Azkaban. We can settle the value of Malfoy Manor and certain other properties later.” She paused so long that it became obvious what she was waiting for, and Harry turned away from Draco and focused on her with a little sigh.  
  
Ollondors smiled at him. “Now,” she said, “comes the sentencing of Narcissa Malfoy.”


	57. Demonstration

Narcissa rose to her feet, her hands folded in front of her. Her face had gone completely blank, snowy and cold. Harry, though, didn’t know much about the way she expressed her emotions in the first place. And she had never been part of the bond.  
  
“I am awaiting my sentence,” she said, when Ollondors stared at her as if she couldn’t come up with a reason for Narcissa to stand.  
  
Ollondors snorted and started to respond, but Mollevron broke in at that point. “May we see a Pensieve memory of the night that you saved Lord Potter’s life?” she asked, so polite that Harry saw he wasn’t the only one gaping at her.  
  
But maybe that was Mollevron’s angle, Harry decided abruptly. She might not care that much for the Malfoys. She might not be there to spare them from rough treatment; at first he had thought she was a hidden ally of Lucius’s, but she had enjoyed comparing Draco to a child too much for that. Maybe she liked Blacks, though, or was related to them somehow.  
  
“I can show it to you, yes,” said Narcissa, and looked around as if expecting to find the Pensieve at her elbow.  
  
“Good,” said Mollevron. She raised a hand, and a house-elf appeared in the middle of the courtroom floor, startling Harry so much that he was glad he was sitting down. Mollevron grinned, but commanded the thing, “Go and fetch the Pensieve that sits on the desk in Madam Ollondors’s office, Otsy.”  
  
“Yes, mistress,” said Otsy, in a voice so squeaky Harry winced, and vanished.  
  
“Funny, Bronwen,” said Ollondors. She had her head twisted to the side as if she wanted to keep Mollevron in full view at every moment, and her smile was sharp and twisted the same way. “I would have assumed that you wanted to use your own Pensieve. I know you have one.”  
  
“I’m sick of you interrupting the trial to pounce on everything you think is favoring the suspects,” said Mollevron in a bored voice. “And you’d accuse me of trying to sabotage something if I used my own Penseive. I hope that you won’t think I could have sabotaged  _your_ Pensieve. This is the best way I know of to actually advance things.”  
  
Ollondors opened her mouth, apparently couldn’t think of anything to say, and sat down again. Harry caught Mollevron’s eyes and smiled at her.  
  
She looked back at him, unimpressed, and Otsy returned with the Pensieve at the same moment. It was a large, ornate thing, made of dark wood, in a way that Harry hadn’t known Pensieves could be; he had assumed they would all be of the same silvery metal that Dumbledore’s had been. Otsy bowed to Narcissa and held out the Pensieve, steadily, his arms serving for a table. Narcissa then held out a hand for a wand.  
  
One of the Aurors standing guard in the back of the courtroom stirred and came forwards, handing Narcissa her wand. Narcissa nodded gracious thanks in a way that made Harry reluctantly smile again, then touched the wand to the temple and drew the memory out. It fell into the wooden Pensieve like soft rain.  
  
“I suspect that this will take a rather long time,” said Ollondors loudly then. “Since not all of us can fit our heads into the Pensieve at once.”  
  
“That won’t be necessary,” said Mollevron. “At least, if that silver carving on the side of your Pensieve means what I think it does.”  
  
Ollondors stiffened. Then she shook her head. “The projection function, yes. Instruct your house-elf to touch the dolphin’s eye with  _one_ finger. I need to cast the necessary spell at the same time.” She raised her wand.  
  
Smiling, Mollevron told her house-elf to touch the dolphin’s eye. Harry had sort of thought that maybe Otsy would just do it on his own once he realized what was needed, but apparently the elf didn’t take instruction from anyone except his mistress. Ollondors’s scowl deepened as she cast the spell.  
  
There was a sigh from the Pensieve, and a gleam like reverse snowfall as the image in it soared up and gathered in front of the audience. Harry watched colors come into it, green and brown and deep silver that he didn’t understand at first until he realized that it was a gleam from the masks of the Death Eaters. Voldemort stretched out an arm and pointed at Harry, lying under the tree where he’d fallen.  
  
Harry did start a little at seeing his body from the outside. He knew what had happened, of course, but it was still weird.  
  
Voldemort told Narcissa to examine him, and Narcissa approached Harry and kneeled down in front of him. Harry blinked. Narcissa showed no emotion at all. Maybe it was just because he didn’t know her as well as Draco and she was hard to read—the way she had been in the courtroom—but he would have thought it would show that she thinking about doing something desperate to make sure her son was still alive.  
  
 _On the other hand, that would hardly fool Voldemort._ Harry just hoped it wouldn’t prejudice the court against her.  
  
Narcissa leaned over Harry’s body and whispered the question, her hand resting on his chest. Harry heard his own voice whisper back, and saw his eyes dart around beneath his eyelids. He winced. Seen from here, it looked incredibly obvious that he was still alive. He didn’t know why the other Death Eaters hadn’t noticed.  
  
Then again, they weren’t standing as close as the audience was in the Pensieve memory. Voldemort and the others stood back, as though Harry might stand up and grab his wand and curse them all in Dumbledore’s name.  
  
 _Hey, something like it happened when I was a baby._  
  
The memory ended right after Narcissa rose to her feet and announced that Harry was dead, and the Death Eaters cheered and began to swarm forwards. Harry reckoned that Narcissa had thought no one really needed to see the conclusion of the Battle of Hogwarts from her point-of-view. Many of them had been there; the ones who hadn’t had already received lots of testimony about what had happened when the bond formed and Harry “came back to life” in the Great Hall.  
  
When the memory finished, Mollevron cackled. Harry turned to face her, swallowing. Maybe she had decided that this wasn’t a good enough memory to vote for Narcissa’s freedom based on the expression on her face, or the fact that Mollevron was so bored with the case, or something else that Harry hadn’t been able to anticipate at all.  
  
But Mollevron was pointing her cane at Ollondors, who wore a deep scowl. “You  _knew_ that it wouldn’t make you look good, to see the memory,” Mollevron said. “You  _knew_. But that doesn’t matter. Mrs. Malfoy was clearly risking her life to say Lord Potter was dead. She did it out of love for her son. There needs to be no other motive. I say that we should let her go free. Or a month’s house arrest at the most.”  
  
“She was still a Malfoy,” said Ollondors between her teeth. “She was still someone who put up with You-Know-Who’s presence in her home, and the presence of Death Eaters, instead of fighting them, and aided and abetted her Death Eater husband and son.”  
  
“And what would  _you_  have done in that situation?”   
  
“I would have stood up to You-Know-Who! I would have died fighting!”  
  
Mollevron only leaned back on her seat, her cane down beside her again, her hand and her lips both crooked at the same angle. Her smile and her contempt were so obvious that she barely needed to show them.  
  
Ollondors whirled on Harry, as if it was his fault. “What do you think, Lord Potter? Narcissa Malfoy is not one of your vassals. Don’t  _you_ think she should have stood up to You-Know-Who, and been braver?”  
  
“I think she was pretty bloody brave doing what she did,” said Harry peacefully. “And since she’s the reason I’m still here and alive, rather than having Voldemort cast an extra Killing Curse on me just to be sure, I’m glad she did it.”  
  
“You wouldn’t have died if he had cast the extra Killing Curse.”  
  
“What preserved me in both circumstances was something unpredictable,” said Harry. He would discuss his mother’s sacrifice endlessly, but he still didn’t want to mention anything about Horcruxes. With his luck, someone out there would decide he  _must_ be evil because he’d hosted a bit of Voldemort’s soul for so long. “I didn’t want to test it. I didn’t really have a plan for surviving that, you know. I went into the Forbidden Forest expecting to die. So I’m grateful that Mrs. Malfoy was there and could help me.”  
  
He turned to look at Narcissa, who was appraising him coolly. Harry had no idea if she would decide this was enough to make up for the life-debt he owed her, but maybe it would start the initial payments.  
  
“Then there’s no more to say,” said Ollondors, voice chilly. Harry kept looking at Narcissa; the temptation to roll his eyes would be too strong if he turned back to Ollondors. Hadn’t she  _realized_ that Harry didn’t agree with her on the Malfoys by now? “The Wizengamot will vote on Narcissa Malfoy’s punishment.”  
  
There was a small debate in response, but only between people who had different ideas on what the terms of Narcissa’s house arrest should be. In the end, it was a month, no more, and Narcissa was subject to the same restraints on leaving the house and the charms on her wand that Harry and Severus were.  
  
Narcissa inclined her head when that was done, and sat down, turning back to her husband and son. Harry looked away to give them what privacy he could.  
  
He could feel the bond stretched between him and Draco vibrating like a plucked string, though, and he suspected that he knew what Draco was feeling anyway. And he suspected what kind of confrontations they would have once they were out of the courtroom.  
  
It was inevitable. The only thing Harry could do was brace for it as best he could, and hope Draco’s parents would talk to him a little before that, modify his shouting a bit.  
  
*  
  
Draco stood next to his father, in the anteroom that Auror Stone had ushered them into. It was small but private, and he knew Aurors were guarding the doors, but they were Aurors under the command of Stone, and she would have told them not to interfere. He might not like the woman much, or really trust her not to abuse her authority over him, but if she did give her word on something, she would keep it.  
  
He stared at his father. He didn’t feel exactly calm, but he felt deep and cold, and he couldn’t stop shivering at the thought of what would happen to Lucius.  
  
 _Maybe Azkaban wouldn’t have been better for me after all._  
  
“Draco,” said his father softly, reaching out and putting his hands on Draco’s shoulders. Draco tried to shake off thoughts of Azkaban and Dementors and Harry and the Stripping of the Wand, and meet his eyes without flinching. “I want you to promise that you will do whatever you must to redeem the Malfoy family name.”  
  
Draco swallowed deeply. “I’ll do what I can, but rebelling against Harry and Auror Stone isn’t going to be easy.”  
  
He wondered a second later if he should have called Harry by his first name in front of Lucius, but his father only frowned at him. “Rebel? No, you mustn’t do that. You must go through this punishment, bear it with dignity, and show your enemies that they cannot crush you.” His hands pressed down, and he swallowed himself. “I would not have wished this for you, I  _do_ not wish this for you, but one must look to the future, beyond the next five years. Or the next thirty. It is what our ancestors have always done.”  
  
Draco stared at his father in silence. This wasn’t the sort of inspirational speech he would have expected from him. “But I thought our ancestors would be angry at me for becoming a vassal to a Lord.”  
  
“That is not something you could help.” Lucius released Draco’s shoulders and paced slowly around the anteroom. “The way you act now that you have the sentence is, however.”  
  
There was a shade of condemnation in those words that Draco picked up on easily, because he had spent his life listening for it. “You don’t think I should have protested so vocally in the courtroom, do you?” He winced at the crack in his own words.  
  
“I do not. You know that you should have held your emotions back and only released them in private.”  
  
“I  _did_ try talking to Harry in private. He didn’t understand what it would do to me to be a child again! He just said that it would be better than going to Azkaban.”  
  
“And so it is.”  
  
Draco bowed his head. He had entered some dreamworld where his father sided with Harry Bloody Potter. “But how can you say that? You know that it means the loss of dignity. They’ll  _laugh_ at our family. I don’t understand how you can support this!”  
  
“Because it is the long run that matters, and dignity in the long run can be earned back. In the meantime, you have done a good job of sacrificing our short-run dignity.”  
  
Draco spun around. His mother had entered the room, and shut the door carefully behind her. She was coming towards him with a rustle of robes that made her stop a moment later and study the hem of them. Finding a speck of dirt, she nodded and swept it away, then looked at Draco again.  
  
“Not you, too,” Draco whispered. “I thought you were going to say that I was right. How can I not be? Harry is doing his very best to humiliate our family and cut our power short! That’s more upsetting than me having to spend time in prison.”  
  
“I think you forget where these proposals originated.” His mother came to a stop in front of him, studying Draco the way she had when he was first about to go to Hogwarts and she seemed to think he wouldn’t survive away from her care. “The Wizengamot. Potter directed them as best he could and tried to make sure that the harshest burden wouldn’t fall on you. Perhaps we can fault him for not being a manipulative genius who would make sure we had to bear no punishment at all. But I do not.”  
  
Draco flushed again at the soft edge to her last words. “Sure, all right, they were the ones who mentioned the Stripping of the Wand. But Harry acted  _happy_ about it.”  
  
“As a matter of fact,” said Narcissa, “Lord Potter stopped me now and spoke to me for a few minutes. It is why I am late joining you. He said that he asked you before the Stripping of the Wand was mentioned if you would object to some lesser punishment being proposed, whatever it was. He said that you said you would not.”  
  
Draco clenched his fists. “How was I supposed to know that it would be  _this_?”  
  
“You could not know,” said Narcissa. Lucius was standing back and watching Draco’s mother with an expression on his face that Draco had never seen before. He couldn’t interpret it fast enough; Narcissa claimed his attention again. “The Stripping of the Wand is an old punishment, not often used anymore. I dare say that none of us thought that the Wizengamot would invoke it.”  
  
Draco waited for some more words, and waited. Then, aware of the silent beats of the clock counting away their time, he burst out, “ _Well_? If you think that I couldn’t know about it, why are you blaming me for reacting this way?”  
  
His mother raised an eyebrow at his father, and Lucius stepped forwards and reclaimed his part in the conversation. “Because you cannot control the future or what your enemies do, but you  _can_ control your own reaction.”  
  
Draco had to turn away and look at the wall. That, just like the faint notes of criticism in his parents’ voices, was also an echo of old lessons.  
  
 _You might not be able to control much, but you can control the way you approach your enemies. You can control what you say. You can control the expression on your face._  
  
Lucius had told him that when he was a child. When he came home after his first year at Hogwarts, infuriated at Harry and the way that Slytherin had had the Cup snatched from them. After his second and third years, as his conflicts with Harry grew more intense and it turned out that stupid hippogriff had escaped execution. When he had arguments with his friends and people who resented his family’s influence. During what should have been his last year at Hogwarts, whenever they could get a moment alone.  
  
Yes, he was right. Draco couldn’t have controlled what Mollevron said, or what Harry did—the other way around, if anything—and maybe even a blink and a gasp of shock was acceptable when he first heard about the punishment. It was old, it was unexpected. His parents hadn’t been prepared for everything in this trial, either.  
  
But he could have avoided ranting and acting like a baby, or standing up and snarling at Weasley the way he did. That was really what had started Mollevron saying that he was a child.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.  
  
“It is not us you need to apologize to,” said Narcissa. “It is your Lord, in command of you for the moment, and your ancestors. And then comport yourself in future the way that you would wish to be seen, rather than simply the way you wish to.”  
  
“It’s so  _irritating_  to have someone in command of me.” If Draco talked about it like that, then he thought he could sound calm and rational. Even though it was more than irritating.  
  
“Yes, it is,” said Lucius. “But I have experienced it, with the Dark Lord. And again during the years when I had to bow and scrape to Ministers who did not have the wit to realize what they owed me. Or were so stupid and so fearful that they made my life tiresome with constant firecalls. There are prices for power, Draco. Your ancestors paid those prices because that was better than losing their family forever.”  
  
 _And now it’s my turn to pay them._ Draco nodded slowly. Seen from that perspective, the Stripping of the Wand didn’t matter so much, because at least he was alive to pay the price. And he wasn’t locked up in a prison and deprived of news. He didn’t think Harry would ever do that to him.  
  
 _Or Auror Stone, for that matter._ He might even learn more about the Ministry than he’d know otherwise, if his guardian had been one of those old pure-bloods who stayed in their houses all the time instead of coming out and engaging with the world.  
  
“You understand now,” said his father, letting one hand rest on Draco’s cheek as if it was an accident that it was there.  
  
“I only wish to know,” Narcissa added, her eyebrows tilted up, “why you did not before. Or why you did not come to us and ask why we supported this way of going about things, if you did not understand.”  
  
Draco sighed and looked at his hands. Now that he was seeing it from a different perspective instead of feeling the actual waves of emotion washing over him, he didn’t  _know_ why he had hated and resented the Stripping of the Wand so much. The same way that he didn’t know why he had panicked over Azkaban once Mollevron had started talking about the Stripping of the Wand, because Azkaban had seemed like nothing.  
  
“Because I wanted people to see me as an adult,” he mumbled finally. “This was another way of saying that I was a child, and nothing I did really  _mattered._  Well, it mattered to me.”  
  
“We will never forget that,” said Narcissa. “I do not think Severus will, either, if only because he already paid part of the price. And I do not think Lord Potter will.”  
  
“But he did disagree with me and treat me like it didn’t matter when I argued with him,” Draco had to point out. “He said that I should be treated like a child if I was acting like one.”  
  
“They can make him legally responsible for you, part of the time,” said Lucius unexpectedly. “They cannot force him to lock you up, or beat you, or make you go to bed at a certain time. How he treats you is up to him and you. If you do not act like a child, I do not think he will treat you like one in the small things.”  
  
Draco winced, but nodded. His father was saying that it was partially  _his_ fault that Harry had treated him like a child in the first place. But the solution also lay in his hands.  
  
 _And it wouldn’t lie in the hands of a real child. They would just take away all responsibility and capacity to do something right away._  
  
So. That was the conclusion that his parents saw, and that Harry had probably been waiting for him to come to. Draco lifted his head and assumed the most adult expression he could.  
  
“Are you really okay with going to prison?” he asked his father. “Since you seem to agree with Harry that it was a horrible punishment.”  
  
“It would be far more horrible,” said Lucius, “for me to see my family imprisoned than to go myself.”  
  
And maybe Draco could think that way, too, to think that it would be far more horrible if the Wizengamot had taken his claims of adulthood seriously and assigned him a term in prison, or Kissed his parents, rather than assigning him the status of a child.  
  
He could make it through this, for the sake of having his mother with him. Of being there at the end of five years, and outwaiting or outliving some of his enemies who would gradually forget about him. Some of the members of the Wizengamot, including those who had condemned him, were awfully old.  
  
A knock on the door. “I have the Aurors here who are assigned to escort Mr. Malfoy to prison,” said Stone’s voice.  
  
Draco lunged forwards and caught his father in a hard hug. Lucius hugged him back, putting all he could into the embrace, all that Draco knew would never go into words, and then retreated to embrace Narcissa. Draco turned to face the wall, to give his parents what little privacy they could have.  
  
His heart was racing again, but for a different reason this time. He had a goal to live for, one that had nothing to do with enemies or Harry. To be there on the day that his family was reunited.  
  
To have a life of his own, but also one that would serve the family and make his ancestors proud. His parents had thought he was capable of doing that even when he  _was_ a real child, or they wouldn’t have bothered teaching him to help.  
  
If he could do it then, he could do it now, with experiences and wisdom that made him more than a boy, no matter what the Wizengamot thought.  
  
And so his face was calm when Auror Stone and the other Aurors came in, and he rebuffed the greedy stares of the Aurors with his own blank face, and walked out under his own power.


	58. Speaking

“Um. I really need to talk to you.”  
  
Harry put down the book he’d been almost reading. He’d anticipated that Draco would come to him and want to talk, which was good, because otherwise Harry would have sat there all evening only pretending to read and learning nothing. The book had kept the others away, though.  
  
 _Or maybe,_ he thought, remembering the sympathetic looks that Pansy and Ron and Hermione had all sent him as he sat there in the library,  _the rest of them just understand that there’s not going to be much peace for me until Draco and I talk_.  
  
“Sure,” Harry said. “Do you want to stay here or go somewhere else?”  
  
Draco shut his eyes and turned his head back and forth for a second as though he was seeking some kind of reassurance invisible to Harry. Then he opened them again and said, “We can stay here. As long as no one comes through the door.”  
  
“My friends would knock, and I can feel anyone else through the bond,” said Harry, smiling at him. “Do you want to explain what’s bothering you most?”  
  
Draco had been about to sit down, but he paused and shot Harry a startled look at that. “I wasn’t coming to complain about anything! I was coming to apologize.”  
  
“Of course,” said Harry, holding back his surprise. He had hoped for that, after the thoughtful look on Draco’s face when he came out of the talk with his parents, but he hadn’t been sure that he should. Draco had been stubborn and insistent about not talking to him before, after all. “I do understand why you did what you did.”  
  
Draco shot him a look of intense misery. “But that isn’t the same as saying you approve of it.”  
  
“Well, no,” Harry conceded. “I didn’t approve of it.”  
  
Draco looked at his hands. “Every punishment seemed worse than the one before,” he whispered. “First, it was horrible just knowing that I was going to have to go through the trial. And then it was the Kiss, or the possibility that they might condemn me to the Kiss. And then it was Azkaban. And then the Stripping of the Wand. It must have been tiresome for you to listen to me.”  
  
“It was only tiresome when you  _wouldn’t_ listen to me,” Harry said. “Honestly,” he added, when Draco glanced at him from beneath lowered eyelashes. “I don’t mind if you get angry and shout at me. The bond gives me ways to handle that. But you were just silent and miserable all the time, and I don’t know how to deal with that. Especially when you shut me out of the bond the way you did after Mollevron first suggested the Stripping of the Wand.”  
  
Draco sighed and bowed his head. “I really don’t have an excuse for that. It was just—it seemed so overwhelming. But I already told you that.”  
  
“Do you think you can be happy with me having partial custody of you?” To Harry, that was really the most important question. He wanted his vassals happy, or the bond would be a source of misery to them both. “Because I’m willing to give all of your custody to Auror Stone if you think I didn’t support you enough.”  
  
“I trust her to be fair,” Draco said in an oddly tight voice. “I don’t trust her to be supportive. I think—I think that you’re going to be supportive. Right?” He lifted his head, and Harry couldn’t stand it any longer. He crossed the room and caught Draco close, almost crushing him.  
  
Draco stiffened a little, and then sighed and melted against him. Harry felt as though he’d lost a limb for the past few days and only had it replaced now. He didn’t know how much time passed with them in that silent embrace, but he knew it wasn’t enough before Draco pulled away from him again.  
  
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve said that yet. Are you going to accept the apology?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said firmly. “I understand why you were doing it. And I’m sorry that there wasn’t a solution that was perfect for everyone that I could find.”  
  
Draco watched him out of the corner of one eye, and then smiled a little, a smile that Harry didn’t think he’d seen from him before. For that matter, the bond between them twitched and gleamed with emotions he didn’t think he’d seen before, warm blue and gold. “I notice that you’re not apologizing for not being able to get my father out of prison.”  
  
Harry debated, then shrugged. “Well. I don’t want to lie.”  
  
“Did you ever consider trying to free him?”  
  
“Not really.” Harry saw the way that Draco’s face twitched, and held back from rolling his eyes with an effort. It was the truth, and he wasn’t about to give Draco a lie when that would work out less than spectacularly. “He’s not my vassal, and I do think he did things that he should go to prison for. But he and I worked out that bargain anyway, when we thought that having character witnesses for you would be a good thing. I always knew that he was willing to go to prison if you could stay free.”  
  
“That’s what he said.” Draco finally chose a chair, further from him than Harry liked, but Harry tried not to let that show as he took his own. “In the anteroom, when I talked to him. And he said I could visit him now and then.” He was silent, smoothing a knuckle along his jaw in a way Harry had sometimes seen him do at Hogwarts.  
  
“I hope so. I don’t really know how often the Wizengamot will give permission for you to move around, but that’s why having an Auror as your partial guardian is a good thing. I know that Auror Stone will take you where she thinks you need to go, and she won’t listen to the Wizengamot trying to tell her that she’s a fool for doing it.”  
  
“You like her, don’t you?”  
  
“Trust her?” The emotions pouring through the bond had become confused again, or maybe Harry hadn’t been reading Draco’s emotions often enough in the recent past for him to really get a handle on what Draco was feeling. “I think she’s fair. That doesn’t really add up to liking her. I still know that she would have arrested me if she thought that me being a Lord was wrong, like Kislik did.”  
  
Draco sighed and leaned his head back on his chair. “You know how I told you that I wanted to make a life separate from the one that my father had planned for me?”  
  
Cautiously, Harry nodded, not sure where this was going.  
  
“It seems every step I take, I just find myself further and further  _entangled_ in that world.” Draco let his hands flop down on either side of him. “I need to think about politics and making my family proud all the time, and I will for as long as I’m a child legally. Five  _years_  of that. How can I really get away and make myself different?”  
  
Harry waited until Draco shot him an exasperated look, then shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t sure if you were really asking for advice or if it was just a rhetorical question.”  
  
“You  _know_ the word rhetorical?”  
  
“Better!” Harry tried to smile as charmingly as he could. He recognized the confusion dancing down the bond now, at least. It was the same confusion he had felt during his fifth year, when he was trying so hard to find his place in the war and didn’t know how to. “I know rhetoric. Without it, the trials would have gone differently.”  
  
Draco folded his arms and shot him a narrow glance. “Yeah, and I don’t think you knew that before, either. The bond is changing you so that you’re a better Lord and we fit each other better. Doesn’t that bother you?”  
  
“Yes and no,” said Harry. “It would bother me more if it was changing me into someone who supported Voldemort or something.”  
  
“And, of course, if you don’t support Voldemort you’re completely good?” Draco had turned pale as he spoke the name, but he’d managed it. Harry was more impressed than he wanted to show, but Draco smiled, so he could probably feel it through the bond anyway.  
  
“You see, that thing, right there?” Harry gestured between them. “It’s useless trying to hide this and feeling off about it all the time. I know that you’re going to feel what I feel, and I’ll feel what you feel, and of  _course_ that bloody influences me. Like the Wizengamot influences me, and my friends’ opinions, and having to stay cooped up in this house, and House rivalry. It’s everything. The bond is just one more part of it.”  
  
“But it’s something that you never thought you’d have to deal with.”  
  
“I didn’t grow up thinking that I’d have to deal with my parents being murdered or being a wizard, either,” said Harry. “And believe me, learning I was the Boy-Who-Lived wasn’t all fun. So I might as well go ahead and deal with it.” He hesitated, then added, “I believe I told you that before.”   
  
“And I believe you were going to tell me something about how I could both be part of my father’s world and make some kind of life for myself.”  
  
Harry nodded. “You’re going to see him as much as I can arrange it, but you won’t see him all the time. He won’t control you or make your life all about  _him_  anymore. I think that’s the best start. You can start talking to other people and reading books that are about supporting different ways of life.”  
  
Draco frowned. “Not too different. I still want to make my ancestors proud.”  
  
“Then I think that you’re the one who’s going to have make most of the decisions about how to be different from his legacy,” said Harry, as gently as he could. “I don’t know what would make your family proud and what would go too far.”  
  
Draco nodded and stared at his hands again. “I’m amazed that you still want me around after the way I acted,” he muttered.  
  
Harry put a quick hand on his arm. “The bond ties us together anyway.’  
  
“And that’s the only reason, right?” Draco’s head came up, his eyes bright and desperate.  
  
Harry had to shake his head. “I’m just saying that my not wanting you around wouldn’t make that much difference. But I understand the way you were reacting. I don’t  _approve_ of it. Please don’t do it again,” he added mildly, when Draco opened his mouth as though to respond. “But I understand. I’ve done plenty of things that I’m not all that proud of, either.”  
  
Draco peered at him in interest. “Like what? You seemed to get away with breaking all the rules around Hogwarts, and then you’ve been pretty much the perfect Lord.”  
  
“I didn’t see what was going on with Blaise in time, and then I gave him too many chances. I didn’t see what Dumbledore wanted me to do to defeat Voldemort in time. Severus almost had to die to get the message to me. I had the accidental bond thing in the first place. I made silly decisions with the Aurors, and I didn’t handle the Wizengamot as well as I could. I got you kidnapped, even if I didn’t mean to. I was hostile to you and a bunch of other Slytherins during Hogwarts, as if House rivalry really mattered all that much when there was a Dark Lord after my blood. I kept secrets and didn’t go to the adults for help a lot because I thought I could handle it on my own or everything was happening too quick and someone might die if I waited. I—”  
  
“Then you have to learn the same thing I do.” Draco was smiling.  
  
“Pardon? I really don’t know a lot of the Potter family traditions.” Harry wasn’t sure that he wanted to, either. Sure, they might be like the Weasleys, but they were also pure-bloods who had intermarried with a lot of pure-bloods over time. If they were more like the Blacks until his dad, he didn’t really care about being close to them or impressing them.  
  
“I mean that you have to learn to live your life without a Dark Lord threatening you all the time. Even the bond happened in the first place because of  _him_  trying to enslave us.” Draco leaned forwards insistently. “I think it’s just as well that he’s gone now.”  
  
“Believe me, I’m relieved, too,” Harry said, dryly enough to make Draco laugh.  
  
“No, I mean, you have to learn your life without him the way I have to learn to live life without my father.” Draco eyed him thoughtfully. “He really has been in the background and controlling you all the time, hasn’t he?”  
  
“Would you describe your father that way?”  
  
Draco flushed. “No, but I was counting on his support a lot more than I realized. I think it’s good that we both have the chance to escape spending all our time thinking about them, that’s all,” he added hastily.  
  
Harry nodded. No one else had pointed that out to him or encouraged him to see his freedom from Voldemort that way. He thought it was worthwhile. “Thanks, Draco. You’re opening up fresh perspectives to me, too, if you ever worry that you aren’t contributing enough.”   
  
Draco’s flushed deepened, but he nodded regally to Harry and stood. “Thank you for talking with me. I’ll let you know if I have any more questions.” He walked to the door like a diplomat for a foreign power leaving.  
  
“Draco?” Harry called softly after him.  
  
No response, but Draco did pause with his hand on the doorknob.  
  
“I really am glad that you didn’t go to Azkaban or get Kissed.”  
  
“Yeah,” Draco said, when enough silence had passed that Harry thought he would walk out of the room without saying anything. “So am I.” Harry thought he could see the edge of a nervous smile on his face as he slipped out.  
  
Harry leaned back, slowly. It felt, for a second, as if the chair he was sitting in would break if he leaned on it too hard.  
  
But it didn’t. And no one came to knock at the door or sent up a flare of sudden distress through the bond.  
  
Harry breathed in and out, and waited. Still, everything was calm and peaceful—for the moment—in and out. It probably wouldn’t last long, but for now, it was lasting enough.   
  
It was over.  
  
*  
  
“Welcome back to the land of the sane.”  
  
Draco sat down across from Pansy, not saying anything. He wasn’t sure that he knew what to say, or anything that wouldn’t make him sound pompous and stuck-up. He looked around, and found Kreacher bowing to him and holding out a plate of scones. It wasn’t breakfast time, but the scones were steaming and looked wonderful, and Draco wasn’t about to argue with that. He put several on his plate and started eating them without any butter or marmalade or anything.  
  
“Well, the land of the marginally sane,” said Pansy, calm and cool judgment in her voice. “I don’t think that anyone who eats their scones absolutely dry can lay claim to that title.”  
  
“Yes, I know you’re going to say that you were right all along in not fighting the bond, and I should have known that and listened to you.” Draco didn’t bother glancing up. “You can gloat now.”  
  
“I don’t actually think I can gloat. Not when it took you so many weeks and different trials to see the truth.”  
  
“Then say that I was a poor Slytherin.” Draco paused to guzzle a lot of milk the house-elf had brought him, not caring about the disgusted expression on Pansy’s face. One thing he wasn’t going to miss was his parents constantly hovering around and correcting his table manners. Maybe he could establish himself as different from other Malfoys in rudeness.  
  
 _Not seriously._ But he deserved the ability to be un-serious for a while.  
  
“I would never say that.” Pansy folded her hands in front of her. “You were concerned about yourself and your family, and you didn’t trust other people to have the same investment in your safety. That’s Slytherin down to the core.”  
  
“What made it so easy for you to trust him?” Draco asked, the question that had bothered him whenever he had a moment to focus on Pansy instead of his own fate or how much he was struggling with Harry or something else that had seemed infinitely more important. “I mean, he was Harry Potter. You wanted to sacrifice him to the Dark Lord at one point.”  
  
“I had no choice. I knew that my future—the foreseeable future—lay with him, and that no one else would fight that much if I went to prison.”  
  
“Your parents?” Draco paused in his eating. He had thought it was normal that Pansy wasn’t hearing from her parents, since very few owls or firecalls would have been able to come through Grimmauld Place’s wards. But now that he thought about it, Harry would probably have tried to contact her parents for her, if Pansy had suggested it. She hadn’t.  
  
“They’re in trouble.” Pansy said it as calmly as she could, but Draco saw the way her fingers curled. “I assume. I haven’t heard. Either way, I knew that calling too much attention to them at the time could cause them  _more_ trouble, because their daughter was the one involved in a high-profile Death Eater trial. Maybe I’ll try to find out what happened to them now that I have the time.”  
  
“I’m sure Harry would help you with that if you wanted. I think family is really important to him.”  
  
“If you can say that, when he didn’t save your father from going to prison, then I’ll trust it,” said Pansy, seriously enough that Draco had to look down and toy with his food again.  
  
“My father wasn’t his vassal,” he mumbled. “I know that he would have fought for him if he was. And my father committed crimes against his friends. I think Harry finds that more difficult to forgive than crimes against him.”  
  
“You did both.”  
  
Draco winced. “And this is the part where I can say that I  _didn’t_  always miss you and that sharp tongue of yours. Unless there’s some special reason that you were sparing me from it in the past few days?”  
  
“I thought you and Harry had enough to worry about, and Harry wouldn’t have thanked me for diverting your attention. Even though I could have.” Pansy gave him an enormous grin that faded a second later. “Are you going to stay under the bond?”  
  
“I think it’s basically a condition of my punishment. The Wizengamot wouldn’t think it was a good idea for Harry to be my guardian if he released me from it.”  
  
Pansy looked up at the ceiling. “Let me remind myself for next time that you’re still relentlessly literal. I was asking if you  _wanted_ to stay under the bond, more than I was asking whether it was legally necessary.”  
  
“Yes, I am. I don’t always like it.” Draco grimaced as he remembered the way that he had yelled at Harry, and Harry had told him to grow up and then walked away. “But it’s the best option for me, and it gives me a chance to recover my family’s pride and dignity and reputation. That’s a good thing.”  
  
“Maybe you and I can work together, then,” Pansy offered. “Because I think that it’ll give me political advantages, too. We can work out what those advantages are together.”  
  
“I don’t really want to be political,” Draco said slowly. “Unless I need to, because someone is defaming my family and I need to stand up against them. But other than that, I don’t have much reason to.” He looked at Pansy and remembered the times he’d seen her arguing with the  _Daily Prophet,_ circling lines in it and throwing the paper across the room when the politicians did something particularly stupid. “I know you want a lot more.”  
  
“Someday I want to sit on the Wizengamot and show them why they should have sent me to Azkaban when they had the chance.”  
  
“By the time you’re there, most of the people who condemned you to house arrest will be long dead,” Draco had to point out. Not all of the Wizengamot were ancient, but a lot of them were, and not everyone lived to be a hundred and fifty years old.  
  
“It’s the legacy that matters. The  _political_ legacy. That’s what I’m going to change. And watch me change other things, too.”  
  
Draco leaned back a bit from the intense heat in her eyes. “Well, just remember not to roast me. I wouldn’t intentionally get in your way.”  
  
“And I’d warn you if you did it unintentionally.”  
  
Privately, Draco decided that he would feel sorry for Harry—not for having Draco as a ward, but because Pansy might be harder to handle than he thought. As long as Pansy stayed within the boundaries of the bond, Harry could probably manage, but he would be spending a lot of time hearing about politics.  
  
“Will your mum be able to visit you?” Pansy asked, changing direction so abruptly that Draco blinked at nothing before he responded.  
  
“I don’t know. It’ll depend on what Auror Stone says, and what  _her_ Auror minders say.”  
  
“But she only got house arrest for a month, so after that it’ll depend mostly on Auror Stone.” Pansy made a thoughtful noise. “I think Auror Stone is fair. She’ll make sure that you get to see each other on a regular basis.”  
  
Draco nodded. He wasn’t afraid of that. “What about your parents? Are you going to ask Harry to contact them?”  
  
“Right after I get my wand back and I can cast a spell on the letter that reassures them it really comes from me. We were told that we were going to get our wands back, with a monitoring charm on them, but I haven’t seen any sign of that so far. They had  _better_ give them back.” Pansy frowned and rapped her fingers on the table.  
  
“They’ll give them back,” Draco said. “I think Harry would raise a fuss if they didn’t, and there’s still people who would listen to him.”  
  
“Sometimes you don’t manage to sound completely unconvincing.” Pansy smiled at him and stood up. “Let me know if you want to learn more about politics and work on them instead of just sitting around and waiting for your family’s reputation to improve on its own.”  
  
She walked out of the kitchen before Draco could retaliate, which he thought was unfair. What if he needed time to think about whether he wanted to be involved in politics or not? What if he had to adjust to the bond and being legally a child and having his father in prison before he did?  
  
“Master Draco Malfoy is to be eating,” said the house-elf, appearing beside him with another plate and glaring at Draco.  
  
Obediently, Draco did so. He had to admit that eating was a lot simpler than deciding on his whole future right now.  
  
And maybe he had all the time to make that decision. The trials were over.


	59. Parents

“The next best thing to freedom, I call it.”  
  
That was Auror Stone, handing over wands. Harry picked his up carefully; he had no trouble recognizing it, even though it looked like a few others. It sang to him, and he smiled and waved it. A stream of sparks shot out of the end, the way it had so long ago in Ollivander’s shop. Harry sighed happily.  
  
“A very dangerous first spell, Lord Potter,” said Auror Stone, her face so impassive that it took a second look for Harry to realize she was joking. “I’m going to have to report that, you realize.”  
  
Harry grinned at her, unable to care that he would still have the monitoring charms on his wand. At least he would be able to  _use_ magic now. That was already an improvement over a very long period of his life, namely the summers he had spent in the Muggle world when he was a Hogwarts student. “You can tell them whatever you like. I know you’ll report the truth.”  
  
“Would the others like to stop listening at the door and come collect theirs?” Stone added, turning her head to regard the door that led out of the sitting room.  
  
Harry turned around in surprise. Most of the time, he thought, the bond would have alerted him to Draco and Pansy and Severus being there, although maybe not to Greg’s constant warm presence; Harry was so used to Greg by now that he didn’t even register as someone separate from Harry’s own magic most of the time. But he supposed he had been too caught up in the happiness of having his wand restored to notice.  
  
“Of course,” he said, and gestured at them. “Come in.”  
  
Pansy had a prim look entirely the equal of Auror Stone’s as she led the way in. Severus was blank, Greg grinning, and Draco eyeing Stone with a nervousness that he couldn’t hide no matter how hard he attempted to. Stone looked back at him with calm interest.  
  
“Take your wands,” she said. “You’ll still be monitored, as your sentences demand, but you can have them back now.”  
  
Pansy rushed in to claim hers, and her hand trembled as she reconnected with it. Severus turned away when he picked his up; he probably didn’t want anyone to see the expression on his face, because it would be vulnerable or some bollocks like that, Harry thought. Greg accepted his back with the same simple warmth that was behind his grin.  
  
That left Draco, standing there and looking back and forth between the single unclaimed wand and Auror Stone as if he thought part of what a guardian would do was place poison on it.  
  
“You and I will have to talk about the limits of my guardianship and what you can and can’t do,” Stone told him. “And of course, starting over completely with a new wand means that you won’t be able to do most of what you could do in the past anyway. But I’m not going to keep you from casting any spells that are in the range of household charms or ones that will make your life easier, such as Summoning Charms, once you reach that level. I take it you’re smart enough not to do things like Summon Dark Arts books you shouldn’t be reading?”  
  
Draco picked up the new wand, but he looked a little stunned, the bond pulsing with regular waves of emotion. Harry couldn’t quite read them, and wondered what Draco had heard in Stone’s words that he hadn’t.  
  
Draco gave the tiniest of bows to Stone and said, “Do you want to talk to me about the guardianship now?”  
  
“Yes,” said Stone. “Come with me.” And she led Draco out of the sitting room without a glance left or right.  
  
Pansy was the one who spoke first when Draco and Auror Stone disappeared out the door. “I didn’t realize they would give him a new wand. I thought they were going to make him watch the breaking of his old one, and then he wouldn’t get a new one for the five years that his legal minority lasts.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “I thought the same thing, but Auror Stone put me right. It was up to her to determine what happened to Draco’s wand, and she thought snapping it in front of him would be needlessly cruel. It’s snapped, though, and she decided to bring a new one for him. He’s still going to have to start over with it.” He cradled his own holly wand against him possessively. He could still remember trying to use Hermione’s and Draco’s old one and how it wasn’t the same as one he was comfortable with, easy in his hands. “So he’s a child practically, like an eleven-year-old trying to use his new wand.”  
  
“I suppose that’s a reasonable and fair interpretation of the law,” said Pansy, and spun her wand a little.  
  
Harry grinned at her. “If you want to, you can go and argue with Auror Stone about it and see what she says.”  
  
“I’m more interested in my guardians than Draco’s,” Pansy said, and turned to regard him. “I’m going to write a letter to my parents and cast a Signature Charm on it so they know where it comes from. Can you make sure it’s sent?”  
  
“I will,” Harry said, a little stunned. Pansy had shown no sign of wanting to contact her parents before, and in the drama with Draco’s parents and Blaise’s mum, Harry had forgotten about them. “Just make sure that the charm won’t sting the owl or anyone else who touches it.”  
  
“Trust me not to forget  _that_ ,” said Pansy, with a bit of the bite back in her voice, and strode out of the room.  
  
Harry turned to Greg. He had been too preoccupied with Draco in the last few days, he thought. But now Pansy’s reminder had told him about someone else he should have remembered. “Do you want to write to your parents, too, Greg?”  
  
“My mum,” Greg said simply. “My dad was a Death Eater, you know. He’s probably already locked up. I don’t want to go to Azkaban.”  
  
Harry nodded in acknowledgment. “Then write her a letter, and I’ll make sure it’s delivered, just like Pansy’s.”  
  
Greg hesitated long enough that Harry expected to feel the bond tremble, but it didn’t. Greg still had that absolute faith and trust in Harry that was hard to deal with sometimes. That made his hesitation all the more unusual, and Harry calmly waited it out. He supposed he could have ordered Greg to speak, but this time, he had the sense it would have been the wrong thing to do.  
  
“I’m not so good with writing,” Greg finally mumbled. “I could firecall her, though. Could I do that?” He looked at Harry with so much trust that Harry found it hard to remember the thick boy he had mocked as Malfoy’s minion, and had thought was only good for beating people up.  
  
“Of course you can do that. Just give me her Floo address, and we’ll work out a time when you can talk to her and we can lift the wards.”  
  
Greg smiled. “She lives in the Turtle’s Back.  _Thank you_ , my Lord.”  
  
Harry nodded, and turned to Severus. He had stayed silent ever since he had reclaimed his wand, and now turned around to face Harry only, Harry thought, because the waiting silence Harry had given him was becoming too loud to ignore. “Is there something I can give you?” He knew Severus didn’t have living parents, but maybe there was someone out there he wanted to contact. Someone at Hogwarts, maybe.  
  
Severus’s expression was hard to read. “I believe that you and I have a bond to discuss.”  
  
*  
  
“Have you decided when you want the bond severed?”  
  
Severus kept his back turned, touching his wand to the fireplace to make the flames roar. He, of course, had had access to a wand during a long term of the imprisonment that the others had not, but that was nothing like having his own back again. It was warm and responsive in his hand, power denied until now leaping and playing around him. If he were fanciful, he would say that the wand rejoiced as much to have him back again as he rejoiced to be with it.  
  
If he were fanciful.  
  
But he had never felt less like being fanciful in his life.  
  
“I know that you’re putting off the moment when you have to speak with me.” Potter’s voice was comfortable. “I just don’t know  _why_. I thought we’d both agreed that you didn’t really want the bond.”  
  
“I never asked for it,” Severus said, turning around and sitting on his bed. Potter, this weirdly comfortable and adult-looking Potter, had taken the chair across from him, and continued watching him with intelligent eyes.   
  
“Fine,” said Potter. “Then you should be able to tell me when you want the bond severed. The earliest I think I would feel ready for it is the day after tomorrow. It’s pretty hard for me to do, you know, and the trials wore me out.”  
  
Severus said nothing, but studied him, waiting for the moment when Potter would lose his temper. The infuriating thing about this new Potter was that he didn’t lose it. He only sat there and waited, and looked as if he would be open to any reasonable conversation that Severus wanted to have.  
  
 _And perhaps some that are not so reasonable._ Severus had to admit that the amount of sacrifices Potter had made for Draco, and the demands he had attended to, were beyond what Severus himself would have done. Potter could be trusted as Draco’s guardian in a way that Severus would never have dreamed of when the bond was first established.  
  
And that meant it was up to Severus to speak.  
  
He bit the inside of his mouth in vexation as he did so, but tried to keep all trace of that away from his face and voice. “I would prefer to wait a few more days. There is the possibility that your vassals who are staying under the bond might blame me for your exhaustion if you did it immediately, although both you and I know that you have other calls on your energy.”  
  
“You’d, what? Fear the wrath of Greg and Pansy?” Potter stared at him.  
  
“I notice you do not admit Draco among the number of your vassals.”  
  
“I don’t know where he really considers himself at the moment.” Potter waved a hand. “He’ll stay under the bond for now, he told me that, but he’s still reeling. I think he should concentrate on what’s going on in his head and heart. He doesn’t have enough to spare to consider my feelings, or yours.”  
  
Severus turned his head away, then stood up and paced to the fireplace again. What he hated most of all, he thought to the flames, was that Potter had grown up unexpectedly  _generous_. Severus could have understood anything else better, even cool intelligence and plans to work with him. But generosity defeated him.  
  
“Severus?”  
  
“I wish to be free of the bond,” said Severus. “And I do not want you to exhaust yourself. What can that be but a sign that the bond has affected my mind in ways that I never wanted it to?”  
  
Silence, and Severus nodded bleakly. Potter’s own generosity was strong enough to defeat even Potter himself.  
  
Then Potter said, “That you have some compassion for me?”  
  
Severus turned around, his hands locking together behind his back. “Then that means the bond  _must_ have influenced me, because I had no such compassion before.”  
  
Potter sighed. “Of course not. You only tried to save my life and nearly sacrificed your life to give me those memories and sent you Patronus to guide me to the Sword of Gryffindor because of your promise to my mum. There was nothing else. You couldn’t have felt upset that the war might fail or felt compassion for the Slytherins that you put yourself in front of when Voldemort cast that curse. Or you couldn’t be affected by the way that you saw I fought for Draco. Of course not.”  
  
Severus paused. Put like that, Potter’s ideas were rather punishing. “Perhaps I could be affected that way. But it is still not natural for me.”  
  
“I’ve given up on trying to think of what is  _natural_ for me, because I don’t know how the trials would have gone without the bond.” Potter stood. “That’s another world, one I don’t know about. So there’s just life with the bond. And in a few days, you won’t have to worry about it, because you’ll be free. Should we say Tuesday?”  
  
Severus watched in silence as Potter walked from the room, and then sat down on the bed and frowned at his walls and ceiling again. This room had been sufficient to contain him such a short time before. He did not understand what he had done wrong that it was not now.  
  
Perhaps Potter was right, however. In a few days, all of Severus’s ideas about compassion and influence would be moot.  
  
 _I should be more cheerful about that than I am,_ Severus decided, and spent the rest of the day worrying about how the bond had affected his mood.  
  
*  
  
“Mum?” Greg whispered, trying not to shake as his mother’s face formed slowly in the flames of the library. She wouldn’t like it if he was shaking, and neither would Greg. It might mean that he was a weak vassal to his Lord.  
  
“Greg.” She nodded to him, and spent a moment looking at him. Greg spent a moment looking at her. She seemed to be all right. She had a mark on her chin that looked as if she had landed on it, but she also had a hand that she reached towards him, and she had her wedding ring on that hand. So her enemies hadn’t taken away everything good.  
  
“I want you to know that I’m a vassal of Lord Potter’s.” Greg knew that his mum might already have heard the news from the paper, but on the other hand, maybe she was hiding and hadn’t heard. And he really wanted to be the one to tell her.  
  
From the way that his mother’s face slowly brightened, Greg knew she hadn’t heard the news before. He sighed. She sat up straight and nodded. “And you are happy? Your Lord treats you well?”  
  
Greg knew she was thinking about his dad. His dad had trusted the Dark Lord, and even Mr. Malfoy a little bit, and bad things had happened.  
  
“He’s different from the Dark Lord, Mum,” Greg said. “He fought so I could stay with him. I got a trial, but they just said that I had to have charms on my wand and house arrest. And it’s okay because I’m with my Lord.”  
  
His mum studied him again. Greg thought she looked a little strange. Her eyes were trembling. “Mum?” he asked uncertainly.  
  
Then he saw that she was blinking back tears, and she stretched out a hand as though she really wanted to reach through the fire and clasp his. Greg lifted his hand up on the other side of the flames so she could see it. They couldn’t actually hold on, but sometimes seeing somebody else’s hand was enough.  
  
“I’m so happy,” his mum whispered. “I thought maybe you were dead, that you were lost. When the battle ended, I stopped getting reports from Hogwarts. No one else has come to the house and demanded to see me or tried to take me away, but I thought that was because they probably didn’t know I was still here. I’ve hidden. I didn’t want to try and go out and search for you because I was afraid I would make it worse. Can you forgive me?”  
  
“I’m fine, Mum,” said Greg gently. “I understand. You could have made things worse. It’s fine. I have a Lord who understands me. I thought that would make you happy,” he added, because his mum had mentioned she was happy. But maybe that was just because he was alive, not because he had a Lord. Greg wanted her to be happy about him being a vassal, too.  
  
His mum blinked rapidly again, and then said, “Yes. That’s the best thing of all. I worried about how to protect you, because both you and your father had the Mark. But if you’re safe, and you’ve had your trial, that only makes your father someone I have to worry about.” From the way she looked around, Greg knew she hadn’t heard from him at all.  
  
“He chose to follow his Lord,” said Greg, “and I chose to follow mine.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to see his dad. He would be happy to know he was alive, but on the other hand, Dad might think he had to kill Lord Potter, and Greg would have to fight him. “We just have to do what we chose to do.”  
  
“I’m so glad that the stories I told you helped you to a happy ending.” His mum gave him a misty smile. “I’m glad  _something_ did.”  
  
“You were always a good mum,” said Greg softly, because he thought that was what she was referring to, and he didn’t want her thinking that she  _wasn’t_. “You always helped me. You always wanted the best for me. But I got to the age where I had to make my own decisions. I don’t think I made bad ones?”  
  
He couldn’t help the way his voice went up on those last words, and his mum clucked and shook her head. “You made the best ones you could. I just wish I had left more decisions open for you.”  
  
“You were always a good mum,” Greg repeated, feeling a little helpless. Did his mum need a hug? Did she need him to say it some more? He didn’t know how to comfort someone who he wasn’t right there to hug and talk to, and someone who had always seemed like she was just fine.  
  
“I know I was.” His mum seemed to stand a little taller. “I just wasn’t sure of it until now. I wanted you to land in a safe place, and it seemed so impossible.” She took a deep breath, and Greg thought she shook off some of the sadness. “I want you to promise me that you won’t try and contact your father. I think he’s running, and he could be betrayed by an owl. And he has to make his own decisions, like you said.”  
  
“I promise,” said Greg obediently. If he got an owl from his dad, he knew, that was a different thing, or else his mum would also have made him promise not to read any owls. “I really am happy, mum.”  
  
“I know you are.”   
  
After that, they just sat there and looked at each other for a while, and then his mum started asking questions about the trial. Greg answered her carefully. He knew he probably didn’t understand everything that was going on, and that he had missed the nuances that led to Draco’s trial. But he could repeat most of what he had said, and most of what Lord Potter had said, and some of what the Wizengamot had asked.  
  
By the end, his mother’s hands  _were_ clasped in front of her, and she  _was_ smiling without any sadness. “Then things went the best way they could, and they played to your strengths.”  
  
Greg smiled. “Good.” His mum and dad had often told him to play to his strengths, but his mum could only give him advice about a few things, and his dad seemed to think that just saying it should be enough—like the Dark Lord thinking that he could order Greg to torture people and that was enough. Neither his mum nor his dad had ever thought he would be in the middle of a Wizengamot trial, Greg knew, so they hadn’t given him advice for that.  
  
At the end of the conversation, his mum looked like she was wiping away tears again, but she also smiled at Greg. “I’m glad that you have a home, and please talk to me again,” she whispered.  
  
“The only way I wouldn’t is if my Lord forbade me to,” Greg promised her. “And I don’t think he would forbid me any such thing.”  
  
“No,” said his mum. “Good-bye, son. I love you.”  
  
And the Floo shut down, and Greg sat there for a while, feeling happy and sad both at once, before he went to find Lord Potter.  
  
*  
  
Pansy walked around the letter waiting on her desk. Then she scowled and looked away from it again. It wasn’t like it was waiting there to attack her.  _She_ was the one who had come up with the words. If she was dissatisfied with them, then she was the one who would have to change them before she sent the letter out. That was the way things worked.   
  
But she didn’t know any better way to say it.  
  
She flopped down in her chair in front of the desk and read the letter again, trying to see it the way her parents would, if it suddenly showed up at their window—or cave, or wherever they were right now—on the leg of an owl.  
  
 _Hullo Mum and Dad,_  
  
 _I know you might have heard that I’m a vassal of Harry Potter, because he started an accidental bond that covered me and a bunch of other Slytherins when the Dark Lord tried to enslave us. I’ve also been through a trial. The Wizengamot ruled that I have to spend some time in house arrest and have monitoring charms on my wand. But I don’t mind that much, because it should convince a bunch of people that I’m harmless, and they’ll be all the more surprised when I come out of hiding and take the political world by storm._  
  
 _Potter has promised to help me. The bond can actually give me an advantage, because it means that people might take me more seriously, and other people might not distrust me as much as they could if I’m associated with a Gryffindor. So I’m going to stay under it for now. Potter could free me, but I don’t think that he really wants to—you know how the Lordship bond affects a Lord—and that suits me fine._  
  
 _Things aren’t all bad. Professor Snape is here, and I trust him. And Greg and Draco are here, and it’s nice to have company. I’ve already received my punishment, and it was a lot milder than it could have been._  
  
 _I hope you’re well._  
  
Then came her signature, and Pansy had no idea what else to write. She leaned her cheek on her hand and stared at the letter for a long, long time.  
  
Finally, she sighed and stood up, then began casting the charms on the parchment that would reassure her parents it had come straight from her quill and nowhere else. Her hand trembled on the wand, and she had to close her eyes and stand still for a bit.  
  
But she was still going to do this. She was  _going_ to. She would  _force_ herself to.   
  
This was the beginning of reclaiming her life.  
  
She might still feel a little uncertain when the owl was finally winging away with her letter, but at least it was done.


	60. Irreversible Decisions

“What was she like, then?”  
  
Draco couldn’t think of anything to say, so he sat in his chair at the table beside Pansy and shrugged listlessly at her. Kreacher appeared beside him with a pot of tea. Draco took the cup and pot from him and smiled at the house-elf, who eyed him a bit before he disappeared. Draco sighed. “She’s not unreasonable.”  
  
“That’s such an enthusiastic recommendation.” Pansy leaned forwards to peer critically into his eyes. Draco tolerated that, but when she reached out to pick up one of his eyelids, he slapped her hand away. “Did she do something to irritate you? I thought you were all right with having Auror Stone for a guardian.”  
  
Draco looked wordlessly into his tea, and then into the food that Kreacher brought back—because of course he had only left to get that, not actually to leave for good. “Thanks, Kreacher,” he muttered, and picked up a piece of bread. Kreacher handed him a chunk of cheese. Draco bit into both of them at the same time and finally managed to say, “I never thought she would take it so  _seriously_.”  
  
That was exactly the word for his meeting with Auror Stone, serious. She had been smiling when she closed the door to the sitting room she’d selected behind them, but she did turn an expression on Draco that he hadn’t seen anywhere but on his parents’ faces. “I know that the Wizengamot made me your guardian to restrict you more than anything else,” she had said, folding her hands on her lap. “That doesn’t mean it’s only a sham guardianship to me.”  
  
“They made you my guardian because Lord Potter suggested it, I thought,” Draco muttered. In front of Auror Stone, he didn’t want to call Harry by his first name.  
  
Stone nodded, that flat face remaining placid. “That’s true, if you want to consider things in their most literal truth. But I wanted you to know that I take  _all_ my Auror duties seriously. It means guarding prisoners from revenge on the part of people they’ve hurt, even when they’re people I hate personally. And it doesn’t matter how I feel about you. It’s my duty to keep you safe.”  
  
Draco had considered that. It wasn’t enthusiasm at all. On the other hand, if Auror Stone had said that she really cared about him, he wouldn’t have believed her. And her being an ally of his family, the only way she might have been able to say that she cared about his well-being and gain his trust, would also have made him wary of her trying to enforce Lucius’s will on him. “I understand.”  
  
“Good,” said Stone, with a smile that Draco thought he wouldn’t earn much, and then had started talking about what his program of training with his new wand would be, and why it was so much harder to learn spells with a new wand when his old wand had been snapped and burned, and about the destruction of psychic bonds between wands and wizards, and all sorts of other things Draco hadn’t known.  
  
“It was just really—thorough,” he said to Pansy now, looking back and forth between her and the pot of tea. The steam was a good way to hide his eyes, he thought.   
  
Pansy remained perched on the edge of her seat. Eventually, she realized she wouldn’t get more information than that. “Unfair,” she muttered, and stole some of Draco’s cheese. “I would tell you all about getting in trouble with my parents or what punishments they gave me.”  
  
“I don’t think that Stone will be big on punishments,” said Draco. “She’s big on  _duties_. Look at this.” He took out one of the long scrolls she had given him, the longest but far from the only one, and unrolled it so Pansy could read it.  
  
Pansy scanned it, and then blinked in confusion. “A list of history books? And Astronomy books. All right, and books on magical law and wizard-Muggle relations, too. And Defense Against the Dark Arts.” She looked at Draco, cocking her head. “Did someone tell her that you didn’t do well in these subjects?”  
  
“I did perfectly fine in Defense,” said Draco, a little stiffly. “And Astronomy. And nobody could have done well in History of Magic as long as the Headmaster refused to replace Binns.”  
  
“Answer the bloody question, Draco bloody Malfoy,” Pansy said, and threw the scroll at him hard enough to hit him in the forehead.  
  
“Fine,” said Draco. “These are the books I’m supposed to read. Stone said that I couldn’t possibly have got a good education at Hogwarts what with professors appearing and disappearing all the time, but even if I did ‘manage to learn something’ in the first five years, I wouldn’t have had a good education in the last two, what with my focus on being a—a Death Eater. And avoiding Death Eaters.”  
  
“Well,” said Pansy, “she’s right.”  
  
Draco gaped at her indignantly. “You  _want_ someone to assign you all these books? And essays, don’t forget the essays. She says that she doesn’t care how long I make them, but they have to be good. And I have to write an essay for  _every book on here,_ Pansy.” He picked up the scroll and shook it at her. “Every bloody one!”  
  
“I wouldn’t want someone to assign them to me.” Pansy still looked infuriatingly calm, leaning back and looking at Draco as though she was interested in what she could make him do. “But I might do it myself. Our educations  _were_ disrupted. It’s good that Stone realizes that. Not every Auror would. They might blame you for doing some of it yourself.”  
  
Draco flushed and put down the scroll again. “You were always weird,” he said, shoving enough food into his mouth that no one sane could expect him to talk.  
  
“If you use that as another word for insightful, then yes.” Pansy looked around as though she expected someone to step up to her and give her an award for it.  
  
“Did you hear back from your parents yet?” Draco was a little sick of talking about Auror Stone. He might mention more of it to his mother, assuming he was allowed to communicate with her, or to Harry, who he thought would understand. But Pansy kept taking his problems and turning them into something else.  
  
“No,” said Pansy. “Sent a letter, and that’s all I can hope for from them.”  
  
Draco paused, but she said nothing, and he said nothing, and sitting there in silence started to feel awkward, so he blurted out the first thing that came into his head. “Did your parents really strongly support the Dark Lord?”  
  
Pansy gave him a suspicious look. “This is the first suitable topic of conversation that occurs to you?”  
  
Draco shrugged, flushing. “You weren’t coming up with one,” he said, and pursued the subject, because he had nothing better to ask. “I know your dad wasn’t a Death Eater.” He would have seen him coming in and out of the Manor during the periods when he was home this last year, if that was so. “But your mum? Did they support him?”  
  
Pansy frowned and examined her hands. “Enough that they thought it was safe to send me back to Hogwarts last year,” she finally said, voice quiet. “Enough that they told me to shut up and go along with what the Carrows and Greyback and Snape were doing in the school. Strongly enough to be upset that I’m Harry’s vassal now?” She sighed, a sigh that seemed to take a long time and start somewhere beneath her lungs. “I don’t know.”  
  
Draco patted her hand, and after that they did sit in silence, with no one breaking it, because he didn’t know what else he would say.   
  
*  
  
“Can’t you be  _here_ for us?”  
  
Harry started as Ron snapped his fingers in front of his face, and then looked down at the wizarding chessboard between them. “Sorry,” he said. “Did I make a stupid move again?” Of course, that was almost a guarantee when he played with Ron. Ron had tried to teach him how to win, but it wasn’t as though Harry had had a lot of ability to concentrate on making his game better in the past year.  
  
Ron sighed and sat back. “We can tell when you’re here in mind and body with us, and when you’re thinking about  _them_ ,” he said. From the bed in the room she and Ron had chosen, Hermione looked over her book and nodded firmly. “I don’t blame you for thinking about them all the time during the trials. But now they’re done, and we’d hoped to have a bit more of  _you_.”  
  
Harry gave Ron a faint smile. “Sorry, but it’s not like me being a Lord ended with the trials, you know. I still have to think about them and care for them.”  
  
“Well, not Snape, not after tomorrow.”  
  
Harry thought he managed to bury his flinch by turning and looking at the chessboard, but Hermione put down her book. “Oh, Harry, has he been awful to you about it? I’m sorry.”  
  
“Not him,” said Harry. When he could concentrate past the ringing in his ears and the instinctive panic that losing another of his vassals caused him, he thought he could say that. “It’s—he’s been as decent as he can. But you know how I didn’t want to let Blaise go, even though he’d been trying to kill me? This is worse. Snape has helped me.”  
  
“I do think that it’ll be a relief when most of them are gone,” said Ron frankly. “You can live your real life again.”  
  
“Greg is going to stay with me,” said Harry, with a glare that made Ron lift his hand.  
  
“That’s why I said  _most_. I know that you promised not to release Goyle. But Snape wants to go, and I don’t think Parkinson and Malfoy are going to stay forever, do you? Or maybe Malfoy has to remain under the bond until he’s legally an adult again. But I do think that he’ll leave right after that.”  
  
Harry said nothing. Ron was probably right. Pansy might want to use the bond to fuel her political ambitions, but sooner or later she would want to do something that the bond wouldn’t permit. And Draco…  
  
The ties that bound Harry to Draco were so made up of apologies and recrimination and past history and obligations that Harry didn’t know how to disentangle them. He did think that trying to separate them when Draco had been under the bond for five years would do worse than hurt him, though. And how would Draco feel about it?  
  
A brisk knock on the door of the room made Harry stand up. He thought for a second that it was Auror Stone or someone else who had Ministry-mandated access to the house, because he hadn’t felt them approach through the bond, but then Severus called, “Potter,” and he knew why. That muted effect of the bond was still functioning.  
  
 _If he hadn’t done that, I might believe that he still wanted to be here,_ Harry thought, mood tainted, and got up to open the door for Severus. “Yes?” he asked when Severus merely looked down his nose at him, making no move to step into the room. “I thought we’d agreed that I’d sever the bond tomorrow at ten. I’m not going to do it earlier.”  
  
*  
  
 _Ungrateful brat._  
  
But Severus stifled the impulse to snap. He knew exactly why Potter was reacting that way. It was the same reason that had brought him to Weasley and Granger’s room—and didn’t the conjunction of those two names with the word “room” haunt him—instead of simply waiting until tomorrow to speak to Potter.  
  
Potter’s eyes were haunted, and that alone would have made Severus speak more softly, but he could sense the disapproving stares of Potter’s friends from behind his back. Weights on his tongue would barely let him speak at all, but he had come here, and so he forced himself. “May I speak to you at some distance?”  
  
“Anything you have to say to Harry, we can hear, too,” said Weasley at once.  
  
Severus sneered at him, finding some outlet for his emotions in a target who undoubtedly deserved them. “And do you share that confidence in return? Does every bit of sickening nonsense you whisper into your girlfriend’s ears come back to Potter?”  
  
Weasley began to turn red and splutter. It was satisfying. Severus watched him until Potter stepped out into the corridor and called back to his friends, “There are only so many places he could hide my dismembered body. I think I’ll be safe.”  
  
He shut the door firmly behind him and turned to face Severus again, crossing his arms in a way that Severus couldn’t remember seeing him do often since the beginning of the bond. “I meant it when I said I wouldn’t change the time of the bond’s severing. So this had better be about something else.”  
  
Severus exhaled slowly, and found his voice. “I no longer know how much of what I feel is the bond influencing me and how much are emotions I would experience in any case.”  
  
Potter frowned a little. “I know. You said. What’s different?”  
  
The clipped tone of his voice made Severus’s bond mark itch. At least it was better than the tingling and other sensations that once would have invaded the Dark Mark. He grimaced, and made himself continue. “I have decided that in this case, my interests must lie with maximizing my happiness and comfort and minimizing my loss.”  
  
Potter’s emotions, always faint since the modifications Severus had made to the bond, altered from distant ice to distant waves. He was puzzled, Severus knew. “Okay. What does that have to do with ending the bond?”  
  
Severus briefly closed his eyes. He was not sure if it was weakness or sense that kept him from simply speaking out. He trusted Potter enough by now that he did not think the boy would mock him.  
  
 _But that cannot keep me from mocking myself._  
  
Severus shook away the silly thought, and said, “I thought that perhaps you could change the bond, because you have shown such control of it. Make it into a different kind of bond, one that would have less influence on me and I would find less confining. That would allow me to keep it and remain in a position I have come to find—comfortable in one way, without giving everything up.”  
  
The silence was so absolute that Severus reached inwards, for his own sense of what Potter was feeling through the bond. He ended up grimacing again. It was far too soft for him to hear.  
  
When he opened his eyes again, though, Potter was smiling, and he had one hand extended as though he was going to capture Severus’s hand and shake it. He caught Severus’s eye and coughed, retracting his arm, but he went on smiling.  
  
“That sounds wonderful,” he said. “It might take me a little while to make the modifications to the bond. Would you be all right waiting?”  
  
“Yes,” said Severus.  
  
The thorn-sharp feeling of discontent that he had experienced on waking that morning, and on and off since, left him. This was the right decision. Perhaps he might feel ill that it  _was_ the right one, but he could not change matters. And at least he would be happier under a bond changed and reshaped by Potter than he would under the original.  
  
“Are you absolutely sure, though?” Potter asked suddenly. “I mean, you hated being bound by anything at all, and having another Lord. Are you sure that you’re not going to change your mind later and decide that you want to be free again? Because I couldn’t stand that.”  
  
Severus winced a little. This boy-man should not be braver than him in showing his emotions and being able to say what he felt.  
  
 _Generosity,_ he thought again. Potter’s expression was generous in its way. He laid himself out, open and bare, and let those who wanted to approach him do it. It took a lot to make him reject someone, the way he had rejected Zabini.  
  
 _Had he always been that way?_ Severus thought he would have noticed before now if the boy was that open-minded and mature, and he would not have worried over losing the war so much.  
  
But if the bond had influenced Potter to be like this, the way it had influenced Severus to feel that he would rather not leave it, this was at least a beneficial change. Severus did not think that Potter would overstep the bounds of the Lordship bond in the way that the Dark Lord always had. And the more solicitous and caring of his vassals’ well-being he was, the better off Severus would be.  
  
And even Draco. That thought cheered Severus up enough that he could offer a grimace to Potter that he was not ashamed to call a smile, though others might be.  
  
“I would prefer if you changed the bond so that I can feel your emotions by reaching out, and you can do the same, but that either of us can close the barrier at once,” he said. “I would not want  _unrestrained_ sharing.”  
  
“Neither would I,” said Potter, with a smile that shone in his eyes. “I’ll see what I can do. And I’ll tell you when I feel able to do it.” He paused.  
  
“Yes?” Severus prompted, resigned enough now to be sure that Potter was going to ask him to do something he didn’t want to do. But if the bond was changed and he could have a possible place to belong without being bound in the meantime, then he would put up with some silly bloody requests.  
  
“I need you to change the bond from your side, too,” said Potter bluntly, and his eyes rose to Severus’s face. “I think that I won’t be able to open up my emotions to you, no matter how I work on it, if you don’t end the Occlusion or whatever you did that’s locking you away from me. That made the bond weaker from the beginning.”  
  
Severus hesitated once. Changing the bond had taken him a lot of work—  
  
Work he could complete again, if need be, now that he had the time and privacy to work on it. House arrest for a year would present him with rather limited social engagements and calls on his labor.  
  
“Very well,” he said. “I can lower the barriers that I raised with a few nights of work.” Perhaps it would come sooner than that, but he was wary, at this point, of promising what he might not be able to deliver. If he accomplished it more quickly, well and good.  
  
Potter relaxed fully. “Good. Then I’ll go back inside and tell Ron and Hermione the good news.” He laid one hand on the door, a narrow gaze on Severus that invited him to object.  
  
Severus inclined his head back. This could not be hidden; Potter’s friends knew that he had intended to leave, and they would question why he had decided to stay. And when Potter altered the bond, it was possible that Draco and Miss Parkinson and the rest of them would feel a change as well.  
  
“Do what you will with informing your friends. I will tell Draco myself.”  
  
Potter leaned back against the closed door behind him and laughed. It was a sound of pure joy, and Severus realized that Potter could relax further after all, even when it did not seem as if he could. “Thank you! I suppose I should go back to calling you Severus around my friends as well as to your face.”  
  
Severus shifted his weight uncomfortably. He did not think yet that he could make the corresponding promise.  
  
“Don’t worry,” said Potter, reading his mind, or his gestures, with frightening ease. “When you’re ready to call me Harry again, I think you’ll do it.” He smiled and waved, then slipped back into the room he had come out of.  
  
Severus frowned at the wall. That had gone as well as he had imagined.  
  
Perhaps  _too_ well.  
  
Severus firmly shook his head and turned to go back to the temporary lab he was setting up in a room that once had had that distinction. No, he would not think like that. The point of staying under the bond, once Potter had changed it, was so that he would have a world where he did not need to doubt things like that.  
  
*  
  
The return owl came more quickly than Pansy had thought it would.  
  
She had to shut her door and lock it with a few charms that she knew wouldn’t trigger the monitors before she could read it. No one would probably come in and surprise her with it, except Potter, if he sensed her distress through the bond, but still.  
  
Then she had to sit down on her bed and shut her eyes before she could read it.  
  
Then she decided that she was being ridiculous, and the only one who was keeping her in a state of suspense was herself, so she snorted in disgust and tore the letter open.  
  
The writing inside was an elegant scrawl that told Pansy at once that her mother had written to her. Her father was still too impatient, long after Hogwarts, to master the neat hand that “should” belong to the descendant of a pure-blood family.  
  
 _Pansy,_  
  
 _We have read what you have written, and we are well-pleased._  
  
For long seconds, Pansy couldn’t read the rest of the letter. Hot tears filled her eyes, and she bowed her head, pressing her hands over her face. She was shaking. Until the weight of it lifted from her shoulders, she hadn’t known how much she’d feared her parents’ disapproval. She would have gone on in spite of it, and even pursued her political career, but it would have been a blot that it was difficult to shake off.  
  
She finally looked up and continued reading the letter, because it was even sillier to avoid the rest of it now that she knew it didn’t contain bad news.  
  
 _We are well-pleased that you have managed to connect yourself to someone who will be important in the post-war world—more important, perhaps, than someone with the name of Parkinson could otherwise be. We hope that Lord Potter will take care of you as befits a vassal of his Lord. If you ever need anything from us, or wish to write to us again, another owl will find us._  
  
 _It will be wiser if we do not visit you, at least during the year you are sentenced to house arrest. We could not come to you safely, and we do not wish to taint your future. For now, we are well, and proud of you._  
  
There were no signatures. Plausible deniability, Pansy knew. If someone found her with the letter and demanded to know who it was from, it contained nothing, not even a reference to her as their daughter, that would link it back to her parents. The note about the name Parkinson could be explained as referring to her and her alone.  
  
But she had their approval.  
  
Pansy lay back on her bed, put her letter on her chest, and closed her eyes. In a little while, she would go downstairs and find Draco and explain the news to him. He was probably the one who could understand it best.  
  
But for now, she wanted to lie there and experience the sensation of a soft explosion of light in her chest, for herself and herself alone.


	61. Changing the Bond

“I presume that you know how you’re going to do this.”  
  
Severus thought his words would startle Potter, maybe make him leap to his feet and turn around with a scowl. Instead, though, Potter only opened his eyes and turned his head in Severus’s direction. He was in the middle of a completely bare sitting room, from which he’d taken out all the furniture. Even the fireplace was covered with a grate, and the rugs rolled up against the walls.  
  
“Yes,” said Potter. “I do now. It’s different from the change that I made when I first gained control of the bond. I thought I could just meditate now and everything would be all right, but it didn’t work out that way.”  
  
Severus moved restlessly. He had to shut the door behind him, he knew, and set up the wards he and Potter had discussed, because otherwise there was too much chance of someone barging in and trying to interrupt them, but he didn’t want to. It would feel like being trapped in one of the bleak Ministry holding cells with Potter.  
  
“You could leave it open, as long as you put up the wards to hold sound out.”  
  
Severus tensed, wondering if this was a bad idea. He didn’t like the thought of Potter knowing him well enough to figure out his nervousness. Did he really want a more intimate bond?  
  
But yes, he did. Even if it was only because he had realized that he would have little structure during the remaining year of his imprisonment and fewer friends without the bond being wrapped around him. He might be pathetic, but at least he would have the foundation to build a new life on.  
  
Grimacing, Severus looked around the room. “I assume that we will need to sit during this process?” He wondered why Potter had removed all the furniture.  
  
“No,” said Potter, and stood up, locking eyes with Severus. Severus stared back, a prickle of danger running up his spine the way it sometimes had when he confronted one of the more fanatical Death Eaters. “It’s going to take a long time inside of our heads, but not so long outside it. And the more sensations we have, the more it’ll distract us. I didn’t realize that until last night,” he added, maybe because he had seen, or sensed, Severus opening his mouth to ask how he had known that. “But I couldn’t do anything with the bond when I was sitting in a comfortable chair or on the couch or even on the rug. So I tried getting rid of most of the sensation, and that turned out to be what was wrong.”  
  
“Let us hope that neither of us falls and cracks his head open on your bare floors.”  
  
Potter only nodded as though Severus’s objection was one that he shared as well. Severus frowned again. Well, perhaps that came from his overprotectiveness of his vassals.  
  
“Did you remove all the Occlumency that you used to shore up your side of the bond?” Potter asked.  
  
Severus hesitated. Potter sighed, and suddenly looked a lot less like the all-wise and all-knowing idiot he had said he was, and more like an ordinary idiot. “I told you that you have to take all of it away, or this wouldn’t work.”  
  
“I left one prop in place, holding up some of the Occlusion,” said Severus reluctantly. “Like the last support that you would leave in a mine. I didn’t want your emotions flooding in on me all at once.”  
  
“You’re going to have to be willing to feel that for at least some of what’s going on here, or it’s not going to work.” Potter’s face had gone neutral in a way that Severus had rarely seen, even around masters like Albus who could control their expressions well.  
  
Or maybe not neutral, just blank, unwilling to afflict Severus with the pain that was likely coming. Severus asked, in what he knew sounded like a crow’s squawk, “And why is that?”  
  
“Because when I lower the shields, the emotions  _will_ rush in on me,” Potter said gently. “And when you get rid of that last piece of Occlumency, they’ll do the same to you. It’s not going to last very long, and we’ll raise the new barriers that will keep the bond less intimate, just like you said you wanted. But if you don’t suffer those few seconds in my head, then you’re going to not have what you want.”  
  
“I thought you said that  _we_ will raise the new barriers?”  
  
Potter nodded. “That was the other thing I figured out last night. This isn’t going to work if I do it alone.”  
  
“You have had no chance to practice.” Severus wondered if he had wrapped the wards too tightly around the door to get through them quickly from the inside. “And you really think that you can do this when we will be doing it for the first time?”  
  
“Yes,” said Potter.  
  
 _That I had such unwavering confidence._ Although, to be fair, Severus didn’t know if it was that or a mask, and he wouldn’t know until he removed the last piece of Occlumency protecting his thoughts. He found himself as reluctant to do that as he would have been to get naked in front of Potter.  
  
Potter waited, though, his eyes unmoving, and Severus growled. He would not let a mere boy, one who had not made as many sacrifices as he had during the war, shame him. The likely outcome had been that he would die trying to defend his Slytherins or when the Dark Lord found out his true allegiance, and he would never had had to deal with Potter as he wavered his way into the post-war world. That things had worked out otherwise was part of that horrible Potter luck.  
  
“Very well,” Severus, and reached in, and pricked the last bubble of Occlumency that floated in his mind, obscuring some of the brighter, livelier corners.  
  
The emotions came roaring back at once. In seconds he knew that Potter was nowhere near as confident as he appeared, and this was like these bloody “adventures” he was always having with his friends in the school, and Severus had  _not_ needed to know all those details of the basilisk fight in second year that popped up the moment he glanced at them.  
  
But Potter also launched himself forwards along the bond at the same time, so that Severus had only an instant to contemplate such things. Then the sensations of the bare room around them faded, and Severus was in a mindscape he neither liked nor understood.  
  
It was not even Potter’s mindscape, which Severus had become resigned to exploring during their Occlumency lessons. It was a strange borderland full of shifting shadows and memories and emotions that exploded into brilliant shards of nothingness when Severus touched them. It was all too obvious that they had come into the landscape of the bond, the unstable place where their thoughts and emotions touched.  
  
 _We have to meld them._  
  
Those words echoed through the borderland and made more emotions explode. Severus ground his teeth.  _That is not what I asked for._  
  
 _Meld them and weave the barriers from them. We can only do this if we’re able to move and think as one being._  
  
Severus shut his eyes. He hated the thought, hated it hard enough that he wanted to shudder away from it. But Potter tugged at him insistently, and remaining in this place was no better an option. Neither was feeling Potter’s emotions undimmed for every day of his life.  
  
 _Very well,_ he whispered, and reached out, and tried to find the places where his emotions would meld and slot into Potter’s.  
  
It was surprisingly easy, something else that made Severus want to writhe. They coiled and snapped and locked, and it was like solving a simple Muggle child’s puzzle, the sort with wooden pieces that Severus had played with until the pieces disintegrated. They were there, and they thought together.  
  
For a moment they turned, tangled together, gold and floating green, voices yawning and yearning around them. They saw Dumbledore as through a thousand faceted insect eyes, and Draco, and other people that Severus did not know but knew. He felt the same instant recognition thrilling through him from Potter’s side.  
  
If there were sides. If there was anything between them now but the intense play of the emotions and the struggle to change the bond in the way that Potter wanted it. That  _Severus_ wanted it, too, he reminded himself. Potter would never have embarked on this without him.  
  
He could see the trailing blue and silver of the Lordship bond winding through Potter’s thoughts, and his own, and the chains that would bind them if they stopped. He did not want those chains back. He continued to press, to try and push the bond into the new configuration that Potter had promised him.  
  
Then the joined puzzle pieces that linked them wavered and fell over, and Severus was gasping in the middle of what looked and felt like a wide hall, their minds stretching limitless around them.  
  
He glanced around, trying to figure out what had become of Potter. He knew that even the most intense pressure between them would have been incapable of  _destroying_ the bond, which meant he had to be somewhere.   
  
Then he saw a flickering fireplace behind him. Severus approached it warily. He had associations with fire that marked it as a destroying force far more than a preserving one, though he supposed that Potter might think of Dumbledore’s phoenix and place fire on the good side because of that.  
  
When he knelt down and reached out to feel the warm stone, Severus knew where Potter was. On the other side of a flexible but firm barrier, one that they could take down at any time. This was only the image that Severus was receiving right now, no more existing in material reality than the chains of the bond he had seen entwining Potter’s thoughts.  
  
Any time one of them wanted, he could come to this barrier and feel it, and Severus would know that Potter was right there and what his emotions were. And Potter could do the same thing with Severus.  
  
Neither of them could remove the barrier entirely unless they cooperated, and they could withdraw to distant corners of their minds the way that Severus could get up and walk back across this large room, to the other side, and be distant from the fireplace. That would prevent the mind-drowning influx of emotions and thoughts that he had feared, and the unrestrained access that had been the greater fear.  
  
And when he touched the warm stone and felt the concern and the relief there, the care that beamed like an underground sun, he acknowledged what the impulse nudging at the back of his own mind was.  
  
 _Isn’t it about time that you called him Harry?_  
  
It was. And when he knew he was safe, Severus could do it without resentment or fear. He nodded his acknowledgment to Harry, and felt the same acknowledgment come back, safe and secure and strong and radiant with the knowledge of what they had accomplished together. Severus turned away.  
  
He faded back to the surface of his mind and opened his eyes to Harry’s beaming welcome.  
  
*  
  
Draco leaned his chin on his hand and struggled to comprehend the stupid book open in front of him. It should have been interesting: the history of how Muggles had reacted to the disappearance of wizards behind the Statute of Secrecy. Some of them had known witches and wizards were real, or had relatives that could perform magic, and sometimes those people had been the most vicious of all about the two worlds separating.  
  
But the book used a higher level of vocabulary than Draco was used to, and it discussed all of these things in a soft, detached tone that hinted Draco ought to know about more history than he already did. It was hard to concentrate, when what he really wanted was to rest and have someone talk sympathetically to him. Oh, he’d spoken with Pansy yesterday, and even had the promise of a letter from his mother in the near future, but he wanted to talk with someone else.  
  
Draco sighed and shook himself, sitting up. He really had to finish this book if he was going to write the essay that Auror Stone wanted him to write by the weekend.  
  
“Draco?”  
  
He hadn’t heard the knock, but he was sure there had been one. He didn’t think Harry was one to walk into his bedroom without one. He turned around and blinked at Harry. “Yeah?” he asked, wondering what had happened.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Harry walked up to him and laid his hand on Draco’s shoulder, his eyes so bright and piercing that Draco blushed a little and looked away, to the side.  
  
“You felt me through the bond?” Of course it would have to be that. Draco didn’t know how he could still forget. It was just, he supposed, that he thought most often of the bond when Harry was right in front of him or hugging him and asking him what he wanted.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, and sat down in the chair on the other side of the little table that Draco had dragged in here from the room his parents had been using. “I didn’t ask a lot about Auror Stone, I know. Was she too strict?”  
  
Draco shook his head. “She’s given me a lot of homework, but she’s good. We’re good. I just—I just wanted to talk to someone.”  
  
“What about?”  
  
“Things in general,” said Draco, and it came bubbling out of his mouth as soon as he got it open. “This can’t go on forever, can it? I mean, Auror Stone can’t assign me homework for five years! And we can’t all live here in Grimmauld Place forever. And my father can’t be in prison forever, and my mother won’t be under house arrest as long as the rest of us—”  
  
He took a deep breath and shut his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to blurt all that out. It’s just—it’s something I’m worried about, and I don’t know who else to talk to about it. Professor Snape has other things to worry about, and Greg is happy, and Pansy is just so concerned about her parents.”  
  
“I understand,” Harry whispered, and took his hand. “When I was a kid, I thought that it couldn’t go on forever, the way I was living with the Dursleys, the way they were treating me. I thought things  _had_  to change. And then, when they did, I was stunned and shocked, and then I decided that being a first-year at Hogwarts was great, but I was afraid the homework would go on forever.”  
  
“It probably seems silly to you,” said Draco, and opened his eyes to watch his hand in Harry’s more than to watch Harry’s face. “Because you lived through so much, and this is a nice house, and at least I’m free instead of in Azkaban.”  
  
“I know what it feels like to feel like something will never end, is what I’m saying.” Harry’s hand tightened, and Draco’s eyes jerked up to his face. Harry was gazing at him steadily, and the bond flooded Draco with a kind of shivery warmth. “But we can go a few places, you know. Under Auror guard, and with prior permission. And I don’t think Auror Stone will keep your mum from visiting you. You could even go visit your father, if you want.”  
  
“Not right now,” Draco said, shuddering. The thought of Azkaban and what he’d escaped—now that he  _understood_ what he’d escaped—was still too close. “I just wanted someone to listen when I said it was a lot.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly, eyes fastened on him. Draco didn’t think that Harry was really listening, though, and frowned at him. Harry seemed to snap back into reality at the motion and leaned forwards. “Do you want to do something that might relieve a bit of your boredom and help you recover some freedom and independence?”  
  
“Yes, of course,” said Draco. “It’s just, how can I? There are lots of people who will be upset if I leave the house.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I know. But I was thinking of traveling mentally, the way you do with a book, and helping me come up with plans.”  
  
“Oh.” Draco did his best to conceal his disappointment. He really had hoped that Harry had a way around the restrictions that these agreements put on him.   
  
“There’s still so much I don’t understand about the wizarding world,” said Harry. “Mostly because I didn’t grow up in it. I wondered if you would help me go through these newspaper articles that are being published about us and help me learn which ones are the genuine threats and which ones are just smoke and hot air?”  
  
Draco paused. “I didn’t think any of them  _were_ genuine threats,” he said slowly, and his heart began beating faster. “I thought all of them were just people yelling about things they couldn’t change. Are you saying they might break into the house and hurt us?” He looked around at the walls and windows that had seemed so sturdy, and wondered if they would splinter in front of another attack like the one the Freedom Fighters had tried to launch.  
  
“No, no, nothing like that,” said Harry, and pressed down on his fingers until Draco had to start looking at him and thinking less about the threats that might come from elsewhere. “I just meant that I didn’t know which ones were worthy of a response and which ones weren’t. Could you help me?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Draco said. “What makes you think I have any more knowledge than you do about that? You should ask Pansy or Granger.”   
  
“Hermione might not know, either, because she’s also Muggleborn,” Harry said firmly. “And Pansy—”  
  
“You’re not Muggleborn!”  
  
“I grew up in the Muggle world, and one of my parents was,” said Harry. “I think that makes a lot of difference. And Pansy…well, she’s so interested in her political career that I think she might put politics first and the safety of the bond and me and you and my friends and the other vassals second.”  
  
Draco held back the temptation to say that Harry  _wasn’t_ Muggleborn and should stop thinking of himself that way, and then paused. That was it, wasn’t it, the reason that Harry wanted his help? He didn’t understand what the nuances like that meant, why it was important to say that one of his parents was Muggleborn but he wasn’t, and what the difference was.  
  
“And you think that I know about pure-bloods and Muggleborns and that sort of thing, and I can help you,” he whispered.  
  
Harry nodded. “Maybe I’ll eventually acquire some knowledge on my own as to what’s really worth responding to, but I don’t have it yet, and I don’t want to fuck things up.”  
  
Draco lifted his head, feeling as though the blush that had invaded his cheeks was retreating to something more soft, and gentle, and bright. This was saying that he was still valuable in spite of everything. This was taking what he had assumed would be shameful for the next five years, the knowledge that his parents had taken so much time and effort to teach him, and transforming it so that he would be able to help Harry.  
  
“I want to do it,” he said. “I can’t promise that I’ll always be good at it, either, and maybe there are some people where you don’t want them to know that a Malfoy was writing the letters. But you’re right, there could be some serious things in there, things that you would be better off talking about. Maybe we can even make some people into allies.”  
  
Harry’s hand tightened to the point that Draco didn’t think he could get away even if he wanted to. Luckily, he didn’t want to. “Thanks. I wasn’t looking forward to asking Severus for help on this and hearing him explain why I was an idiot.”  
  
Draco snorted. “No, Professor Snape doesn’t have the experience in the wizarding world necessary to catch all the nuances, either.” He didn’t think he could bring himself to call the professor by his first name unless Snape gave him specific permission, but there was no reason to think that he’d have to. “Now, one thing you should remember is that not everyone writing and saying that they’re pure-bloods and you should listen to them is actually expressing what a lot of pure-bloods think…”  
  
*  
  
Severus had intended to talk with Draco about many things that day. The trial, whether he was fully settled into the life that Harry and Auror Stone between them seemed determined to make for him, how much he missed his parents, whether there was anything Severus could do to help him. In struggling for his own freedom and setting up Occlumency against the bond, Severus had neglected his Slytherins more than he liked to think about.  
  
But when he paused at Draco’s room, preparing himself for the knock on the door and the little speech he would have to make when Draco asked why Severus had abandoned him, he found that he didn’t have to intrude after all. There were two voices in the room, and Severus would have recognized the heavy tones of Mr. Goyle’s or the light ones of Miss Parkinson’s. He’d heard them plotting enough with Draco over the years.  
  
This was two voices, one that asked questions and one that answered them, and the one that answered them—Draco’s—was filled with a swelling confidence that Severus had believed would take him much longer to recover after the trial. And the other, Harry’s, was low and soft and asked things and listened to the explanations.  
  
Standing there, Severus felt he understood, with his emotions as well as his intellect, what Harry had been saying, about why it didn’t matter if the bond had changed them, since the changes were entwined so insistently with their own identities and ideas anyway. If the bond had made Harry into the kind of person who could give Draco back his confidence, then Severus was content with it.  
  
For Draco, if not always for himself.  
  
He turned and slipped quietly down the stairs and in the direction of the library. If Harry had used the bond to notice his presence, it never showed up in the constant calm, easy stream of speaking.


	62. Opening Moves

“I hate having to leave you here.”  
  
Harry grinned and hugged Hermione. “I’ve been talking to Auror Stone. She said that I could probably have an expedition outside soon, since I haven’t objected to the house arrest so far and some of the accusations about me are dying down. It won’t be forever. And you can visit any time you want.”  
  
“Yes,  _us_.” Hermione put her hands on Harry’s shoulders and looked into his eyes, so steadily that Harry knew he couldn’t have hidden away or flinched back even if he wanted to. “Harry, do you realize that you’re going to be here for a year?”  
  
“No, really!” Harry staggered back and leaned against the wall. “The Wizengamot never told me that when they condemned me to house arrest for a year!”  
  
“What she  _means_ ,” said Ron, glaring back and forth as though Harry and Hermione and the wallpaper in the entrance had all offended him together, “is that you haven’t really absorbed it yet. You’ve only been thinking about your vassals and changing the bond and whatever they need you to do next. You haven’t been thinking about how you’ll survive when it sinks home.”  
  
“I’m not alone,” said Harry softly. “I know that you think none of them care, Ron, but they care in their different ways. I know Greg would never hurt me or let me be hurt. And Severus wouldn’t have asked to stay in the bond if he wanted to be away from me completely. Pansy has given me good advice, you know. And Draco…”  
  
It was still hard to see what kind of complications the bond was setting up in his relationship with Draco, and Harry thought it was probably best if it stayed that way. It might go nowhere. It might mean that Draco would come to see Harry as a kind of big brother or guardian even after the terms of his legal childhood were done. Harry had certain wishes about where it would go, but no certainties.  
  
“You’re not going to have your freedom no matter what happens, though,” Ron pointed out. “Not from the house arrest—”  
  
“Until a year is up, right,” Harry said, nodding. He wondered when and how Ron would come to understand that Harry had accepted his punishment. He wouldn’t have got away without  _some_ kind of punishment under this Wizengamot, and at least it was relatively mild.  
  
“And not from the bond,” Ron finished, in the voice of one determined to be heard. “How are you going to lead a normal life even once the year is up?”  
  
“Do you think all the Lords and Ladies who had vassals didn’t lead normal lives?” Harry asked in interest. He had meant to do more research on that, on what the social expectations were for them and if they always lived with their vassals or sometimes lived apart in their own homes, but it had understandably fallen to the bottom of his list with everything else that he was supposed to do.  
  
“Not ones who have them as closely bonded as you do,” said Ron flatly. “Sorry, mate, but you can’t deny that it’s unhealthy to have Goyle and Malfoy following you around that closely.”  
  
“Because they’re Goyle and Malfoy, or just because most Lords and Ladies don’t have that close a bond with their vassals?” Harry looked evenly into Ron’s eyes, and waited for a response when he started spluttering.  
  
“Leave him alone, Ron,” Hermione said, which was unexpected enough that Harry turned to study her. Hermione shook her head at him and reached out to lay a hand on Ron’s arm. “Yes, this didn’t turn out the way we thought it would when Harry was confronting Voldemort and protecting the Slytherins. But he’s happy.”  
  
“He’s only happy because the bond made him be,” Ron muttered.  
  
“I told  _them_ , and I’ll tell you,” Harry said, and held up his hands. “I don’t know what kind of person I would be without the bond. If that’s the thing that changed me, then, well, I can’t change back. It’s like saying that I would be a happier person if my parents had lived. I probably would have, but I can’t know that  _for sure_. And nothing I can do is going to bring my parents back, period. I would rather go on living as the happy person I am than start changing things around because I might be happier if I did.”  
  
“You could sever the bond, though.”  
  
“I don’t want to.”  
  
Ron looked him in the eyes for what felt like the first time in a long time, though in reality Harry knew it was only in the last few days that Ron had started pushing for him to sever the bond and let  _all_ his vassals go, not just Severus. “You mean that,” he finally whispered, in wonder. “You really like what the bond is making you into.”  
  
“Or helping me be.”  
  
Ron went on staring, and then abruptly lunged forwards and hugged him hard enough to nearly topple Harry from his feet. He ended up staggering back against the wall with a grunt, and heard a door open from a short distance away. Greg had agreed to leave Harry alone so that he and his friends could say goodbye properly, but he hadn’t been happy about it.  
  
“It’s all right, Greg,” Harry called. He both heard and felt the simmering pause before the door shut again.  
  
“If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s you, mate,” Ron muttered into his ear before he let Harry go and stood back, shaking his head. “I’m not going to pretend that I understand this. I think it’s pretty bloody weird. But if that’s what makes you happy, then I’ll leave you alone and stop poking you.”  
  
“Good,” said Harry. “I really do want to be your friend.” He reached out one hand to Ron and one to Hermione, who came forwards and took it with a slightly misty smile. Harry suspected it was as hard for her to leave him here as it was for Ron, even if she had been the one to see sooner that he really was happy. “And a Lord at the same time. I want both. Why can’t I have both?”  
  
“No reason from our end,” Hermione said firmly, and then nudged Ron under the ribs with her elbow until he started and nodded.  
  
“Oh, yeah! And probably not from their end, either.”  
  
“You deserve to have exactly what you want,” Hermione murmured, turning back to Harry. “I don’t understand it, but…I don’t know if you would understand all the choices that I have to make to be happy, either.”  
  
Harry looked at her, grinning, remembering S.P.E.W. and the way he and Ron had reacted when Hermione first came up with it. “And let’s be fair, your ways of being happy are a lot more unprecedented than a Lordship bond.”  
  
“That’s what makes it  _wonderful_ ,” said Hermione with a sniff, and prodded him with one hand until he looked at her and she could hug him. “We’ll write. We’re only going to Australia, not leaving the planet.”  
  
“I know,” Harry said, and tightened the hug. “And I hope you find them. I really do.”  
  
Knowing Hermione, they wouldn’t only find her  _Obliviated_  parents, they would reverse the Memory Charm and talk their way through the difficult scene that would follow. Harry had to admit he wanted to be there with them for that, but he didn’t know if he would be able to. It might happen in Australia. It might happen in Britain, but the Aurors wouldn’t give him permission to leave the house during that time.  
  
Choosing his vassals and the Lordship bond right now wasn’t the end of the world, or the end of his friendships. They would separate for a while, but always come back together, talking and laughing about the things they had done since they had seen each other last, understanding each other right away.  
  
Harry had to admit that he really, really liked the vision of that.  
  
*  
  
“This is one that you should take seriously.” Draco gingerly separated the letter on the top of the pile from the rest and put it down on the near side of the table. He could see Harry eyeing him as if he didn’t understand Draco’s extreme caution, but maybe he would, once Draco had explained.  
  
“Why?” Harry leaned over to read the letter instead of touching it, which showed an instinctive respect for Draco’s caution, which was—pleasing, or more than that. “I thought it was one of the sillier ones, actually. Bragging that the writer knows some vampires and they’re going to let them loose on me and my vassals if I don’t end the Lordship bond?” Harry shook his head. “They sounded like a Freedom Fighter, but they never used vampires against me.”  
  
“It’s the handwriting,” Draco said. “See the way that the letters curve up at the ends like that?” He was a little puzzled that Granger hadn’t noted it and told Harry about it, but then, perhaps Granger would just have thought it was a peculiarity of the writer’s. Draco wouldn’t be surprised.  
  
“Yes. What about it?”  
  
Faced with Harry’s bright, challenging gaze, Draco experienced the first tremor of doubt since Harry had started asking him to help. This was a conclusion that was pretty far away from the ones his friends had been able to offer him. Was he going to  _believe_ Draco even if Draco told him the truth?  
  
Draco decided he could worry about that later, and plunged into the explanation. “Only certain families are trained to write like that anymore. Well, and maybe people adopted by those families—” He cut himself off. He wasn’t going to get into the rare circumstances when adoption by pure-blood families happened, and the way that those children would often be listed as blood children on family tapestries. “It’s a style of handwriting that went out of fashion years ago, because some people found it hard to read. The ones who still use it are people who have a lot of support and a lot of money.”  
  
Harry eyed the letter thoughtfully. “Does that translate to support among the vampires? I didn’t think you could just hire them, no matter how much money you had.”  
  
Draco felt his own flash of surprise, and then had to smile at himself. He knew Harry wasn’t stupid. “No, but you might be able to use your money to buy them blood or willing victims. So yes, you still have to take it seriously.”  
  
“And what if I don’t want to do what they demand?” There was a slight edge in Harry’s voice, a tension to his shoulders that Draco could read easily. “Even if I respect that they have the power to threaten me, I’m not going to end the bond and give up my vassals just to please them, sorry.”  
  
“No, no, no one’s asking you to do that,” said Draco, with a wave of his hands that he hoped would smother the sharp flame growing in Harry’s eyes.  
  
“Except  _them_ ,” said Harry, and cut his head at the letter with a sharpness that made Draco wince before he caught himself.  
  
“Right, but they’re not saying that you have to do it right now or suffer the consequences,” said Draco. “This is a kind of—of game that the pure-blood families engage in. A kind of play-fight. You get to choose how you respond, the same way you would if someone threatened you. If you just attack them, they would defend themselves, but they’re giving you the chance to respond differently  _because_ it was a threat instead of a physical attack.”  
  
Harry paused, and Draco wasn’t sure for a second if he was going to absorb what Draco was saying, or care about it. Then he grunted and leaned back in his seat. “Maybe they’re different from the rest of the Freedom Fighters after all.”  
  
“Yes, that’s right, they are,” said Draco encouragingly, and moved on before Harry could change his mind. “So. I think you need to take them seriously as far as granting them the power to command vampires, which they could do. But that doesn’t mean that you need to believe they’re going to launch themselves at you right now if you don’t end the Lordship bond.”  
  
“What do you think they’re  _expecting_ me to respond with?” Harry turned a gaze on Draco that made him feel flushed and small, full of power and reeling from the weight of his responsibilities, both at once.  
  
“Probably a flattering, empty request to meet,” said Draco, thinking back to some of the encounters his father had told him about having with these families, who often called themselves the Purest of the Pure. “They’ll refuse it, and threaten you unless you fulfill their initial demand instead. Or they’ll tell you that they’re going to research you some more, and figure out whether you would be all right to meet from that.”  
  
“All right to  _meet_?”  
  
Draco had to smile. “Consider that they’re secure enough to send you threats even though you’re both a Lord  _and_ the Boy-Who-Lived. They have a pretty high opinion of themselves and who they’re going to dirty their drawing rooms with.”  
  
Harry decided to take it the way Draco had meant it, and laugh it off. He leaned forwards and tapped his finger against the letter. “And you can tell me what I should say to make it seem like I respect them but I’m not going to dissolve the Lordship bond, right?”  
  
“Of course.” Draco reached for parchment, quill, ink, then shook his head and called, “Kreacher, can we get some ink made from high-quality dragon’s tail, please?”  
  
“Young Master Malfoy is having good taste,” said Kreacher, appearing beside them suddenly enough that Harry jumped and Draco had to hide his snicker. He handed Draco an inkwell that Draco suspected had probably been in the house for years with a low bow. “Mistress Walburga is be keeping this ink for special occasions. She was saying—”   
  
“I’m sure it’s fascinating, and I’ll listen to it right after I finish writing this letter,” Draco interrupted, smiling at him.  
  
Kreacher gave another, overwhelmed little bow, as though he liked the way that Draco had handled this. Well, maybe he did, Draco conceded, turning back to choose the right words that would convince the Purest of the Pure Harry had received their letter and thought carefully about it. It must be a long time since Kreacher had had a master who understood things like why preserving ink was important.  
  
Harry was oddly silent beside him. When he had written a paragraph, Draco finally glanced over at him, wondering if Harry had wanted to write this letter himself, and was annoyed that Draco had taken it over for him.  
  
No. Instead, Harry was asleep, his head drooping and his arm braced along the arm of his chair so that his head was mostly supported on his shoulder. A small line of drool made its way down his face from the corner of his lips.  
  
Draco stared, then shook his head and went back to writing with a lighter heart. He couldn’t have asked for a clearer sign that Harry trusted him to do whatever he wanted.  
  
*  
  
Pansy swallowed back the nervousness that would otherwise come out of his mouth in a croak, and knocked on Harry’s door.  
  
It took him a few minutes to answer, but that wasn’t a bad thing. It gave Pansy a chance to compose herself, and think about how she would frame her request. By the time Harry finally looked out, she was calm enough to smile at him.  
  
“Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry if you were resting, but I really needed to talk to you about my parents.” The bond had probably already told him her emotions, anyway, if not what she wanted, so it wouldn’t be such a surprise.  
  
“Oh,” said Harry, and he blinked enough to make Pansy sure it was surprise, after all. “Fine. Come in.” He moved back from the door and waved his hand at the chair in front of the desk, where it looked like he’d been sitting to read a massive book. “You can take that.” He sat down on his bed.  
  
Pansy picked up the book, and nearly dropped it. “Pure-blood culture? I never thought you’d be interested in that.”  
  
Harry shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. “Draco is helping me respond to the letters and Howlers and threats I’ve got, and it turns out that he picks up on all these subtle little nuances that I never knew existed. I don’t like feeling helpless. And I’m going to be around pure-bloods or have people assume I know all about them for a really long time since I’m going to keep the Lordship bond, so…”  
  
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” Pansy said, and put the book down carefully. It might be a good thing, since it would help her cause. She leaned forwards, hands clasped around her knees, and studied Harry carefully. “My parents are in hiding, you know. They don’t want me to risk contacting them very often.”  
  
“Right, I knew that,” said Harry, giving her a sharp look.  
  
Pansy relaxed. She liked the little flutters of irritation between them better than she did a completely smooth understanding. “Well, that means that my last name is likely to be a liability for a while. I want to know if you would extend your protection to them, if they did show up.”  
  
Harry watched her with unseeing eyes for a second. Then he said, “It would depend on what they’d done.”  
  
“Against you? I know that neither one of them was a Death Eater—”  
  
“To help me,” Harry cut in. “The only reason that I was able to get Mrs. Malfoy a reduced sentence was that she helped me.”  
  
Pansy paused again. “And neither of Draco’s parents was your vassal, I know,” she said at last. “I’m not asking you to take my parents on as your vassals. I just want to know if you would intervene on their behalf.”  
  
“It would depend on what they would do for me.”  
  
Pansy leaned back from him and considered his face. Not cold, she thought, but a little reserved, as if he had spent a lot of energy on the trials and didn’t really know how to make it come back to him. “You’ve changed,” she said. “I think the boy you used to be would have volunteered to protect them immediately, whether or not they’d done anything to help him.”  
  
“The boy I  _used_ to be would have despised them because they were Slytherins.”  
  
Pansy smiled. She didn’t know she was going to until she felt it creeping across her face, but by then it was easy enough to give into. “That’s true. All right. You don’t think they should come out of hiding?”  
  
“Not until they have a plan about where to go and what to do that doesn’t depend on me. I think I have to stay quiet right now, and only risk making noise about things that matter to you and me and the other vassals and our day-to-day survival. Maybe my friends, but they’re busy right now, and I think I would need their help more than they’d need mine.” Harry studied her face. “You see?”  
  
Pansy nodded. “It’s straightforward and honest. I can’t say that I didn’t hope for a different answer, but you’re right that under house arrest and with everyone suspecting you anyway, you don’t make a good ally for people who want to gain their good name back.” She started to stand up.  
  
Harry caught her wrist. “I’m really sorry.”  
  
 _The boy who wants to help everyone is still down there._ Pansy nodded. “I know.”  
  
“You said that having the last name Parkinson is a liability,” Harry pursued, as if he was going to recount every detail of the conversation and make Pansy think about all of them. “What about you, though? Can’t you do something that would make it less of a liability? I know you were thinking about a political career anyway.”  
  
Pansy was tempted in a surprising way. “I can hardly start my political career as long as we’re under house arrest.”  
  
“There are people who would want to interview you. Rita Skeeter, for example. You can start getting your side of the story out there, and teaching people what you believe and that they should watch out for you.”  
  
Pansy pictured the woman who had caused so much trouble for Harry at Draco’s urging, and snorted. “You really think that she would take down my words the way I want them taken down? I’d spend all my time reading the interviews I gave to make sure that they were an accurate representation.”  
  
Harry grinned. “She can be surprisingly honest when the story’s good enough. What about sharing the story that you told in the trial? That even the Slytherins who wanted to be safe and away from the Carrows during the war didn’t really get a chance?”  
  
Pansy’s fingers curled into her palms. “That’s personal.”  
  
“So personal that you can’t use it to manipulate people?”  
  
“You really  _have_ changed,” said Pansy, before she could consider whether or not she ought to say it. “Is it the bond?”  
  
“Yeah, I think so.” Harry gave her the deep smile that she would have only seen directed at his friends before, if that. “But I don’t think it’s a bad thing. Not if I can encourage my vassals to do things for themselves and stand on their own. And think what a good story it would make. The Slytherin who’s outraged over the abuses heaped on her House. Maybe it took her a long time to wake up, but when she saw the same things happening to people she knew personally that had happened to other people, then she did. She can talk about her determination to keep them from ever happening again. And she and Rita Skeeter might understand each other better than some people would.”  
  
Pansy sniffed, but she could see the story playing out in her mind. The fake tears she would cry, and the real ones she could cry at the right time. And the way that Skeeter’s eyes would widen and her hands would twitch as she wrote down all the brilliant, twisting words in all the right places.  
  
“If you make your name respected enough,” Harry continued softly, “then that’s making it a better world to be named Parkinson in. And a better world for your parents to come back into, whenever they decide that they want to do it.”  
  
Pansy cocked her head to the side, her smile growing. She had thought that she would use the bond for her political gain by making it clear that she was on the same side as a great hero, and under his protection. But this was better. This was something that would allow her to stand on her own.  
  
“Thanks,” she said. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”  
  
Harry grinned and leaned back on his pillows. “The bond does that for me, every day. Glad I could return the favor.”


	63. Disparate Voices

The house-elf brought a letter to Severus at breakfast, a look of profound disapproval on his face. “Master Snape is seeing this,” he said, and walked away before Severus could question him.  
  
Severus stared at the letter, and then grimaced as he saw the handwriting. He knew that, all right, from too many evenings of hunching over essays and trying to decipher cramped scribbles. He sighed in resignation as he opened the envelope.  
  
 _Dear Professor Snape,_  
  
 _I know that you probably don't want to hear from me, but you're the only one who can help me. I know that you still look out for your Slytherins, and I'm one of those, whatever else I am, whatever mistakes I made._  
  
 _I made a mistake when I rebelled against the Lordship bond and tried to kill Potter. But I didn't know what else to do at the time, because my mother had raised me in a way that made freedom the ultimate goal. Sitting here in the Ministry cells gave me a chance to rethink my position. I know now that you and Draco made the right choice, and I made the wrong one._  
  
 _Will you please intercede for me with Potter? Tell him that I'll accept the Lordship bond back, at least temporarily, if it gets me out of the holding cells and put under house arrest. That would be a lot better than staring at the ceiling and the blank walls here all day. I probably couldn't have got the ink and parchment for this letter if there weren't a few people here sympathetic to abused children._  
  
 _Please say that you'll try to help me. I don't require anything more than an affirmation for now. Take as long as you need to persuade Potter. I'll sit here, and suffer from nothing but an excess of hope._  
  
 _Yours sincerely,_  
 _Blaise Zabini._  
  
Severus sat there and bleakly admired it, that little masterpiece of the manipulator's craft. Blaise had launched himself as hard as he could at the remaining prejudices Severus would have left concerning him. He had mentioned his mother's treatment as abusive, where before he would have refused to use that word. He had made himself sound cringing and cowering instead of proud, and slipped in hints that he hoped would engage Severus's sympathy. The Lordship bond was made to sound like the ultimate good and something he would begrudge at the same time, probably because he wanted more than one way to make an appeal to Severus. It was a good thing that Harry had not received this letter, Severus decided. He was the one who would have to make the decision, but it would have been harder with Blaise's words in front of him.  
  
That left Severus, as adult in the bond and as Shield, to decide whether he should show Blaise's letter to Harry at all.  
  
 _Well. Did I not just think that Harry was the one who would have to make the decision?_  
  
Severus nodded and stood. His would be the manner of presenting and choice of words, but it was time to carry the news to Harry.  
  
*  
  
Harry sat still for a long time after Severus told him about Blaise's request. He thought he needed that time to stare at the walls and recover himself.   
  
The first thing he had felt, with a flash of lightning over an empty space still in his heart, was that he had a chance to fix a mistake and put Blaise back in his place in his bond.   
  
The second thing he had felt was weariness, as he thought of the ways that Blaise had fought and resisted him and spurned all kinds of second chances and tried to testify against Harry during the trials. It hadn't worked, but that didn't make the attempt less annoying. Even free of the bond, he hadn't been able to give up his resentment of Harry.  
  
And the third thing he felt was anger.  
  
Harry looked up at Severus, who stood quietly waiting for his decision in a way that Harry would never have thought he could do. Not the restless, nervous Severus, who had wanted to be free of the bond from the day it appeared. He had changed.  
  
Well, so had Harry. He wasn't the naive fool that he thought Blaise was trying to appeal to. Not anymore.  
  
"Tell him," he said, his voice calm and firm, "that I decline to take him back into the bond. He can do what he wants, as far as trying to mitigate his sentence. He can also go back to his mother, if he wants. I refuse to have anything to do with him anymore. He's on his own."  
  
Severus nodded, and proved that he hadn't changed that much by the flash of his eyes. "He begged me to write the letter back to him, telling him what you had decided," he drawled. "I shall enjoy it."  
  
Harry grinned. "I'll let you do that."  
  
He thought about it a little more after Severus had left, turning the decision over in his head like a jewel on cloth and wondering if he should reconsider. But no matter how many times he flipped it, the memory that was strongest was always the one of Blaise's face, sneering at him in rejection no matter what Harry offered.  
  
It made him think of Draco and the way he had raged against the bond, screamed at Harry, tried to get him to take back his punishments--but never tried to kill him, much less invited his parents to try and act against Harry.   
  
 _You know there are reasons for that. Draco was encouraged to have a little more independence and try to make some of his own choices, while all Blaise's mother wanted to do was raise someone who was dependent on her every move._  
  
But knowing that didn't mean it was easy to forgive Blaise for what he had done, and now that the bond that had connected him to Blaise was broken, Harry couldn't feel the tempting, tugging urge he had before, to forgive him and get it over with. He was a changed person, but he could see Blaise without the haze of the change overcoming his vision.  
  
They were better off as they were.  
  
*  
  
Draco finally couldn't take it any longer, and stopped sorting the post that had come that day to swivel around in his chair and face Harry. "What's the problem?" he snapped.  
  
Harry, who had been leaning his chin on his hand while he stared at Draco, shook his head and sat up. "What?"  
  
"You've been acting as though I have some kind of rash for  _days._ " Draco brought his hand down in the middle of the desk they were using. "You've been staring at me and frowning at me and then looking away when I try to ask you what's wrong. And you keep blushing at the weirdest times. What  _is_  it?"  
  
Harry frowned again, and Draco was tempted to reach out and shake him, to see if that produced a different kind of reaction. But Harry finally exhaled and looked away from him with a little nod, as though he had come to a private conclusion. Draco waited, with his heart leaping around like a hare inside his ribcage. Had the bond told Harry that something was wrong between them, and he would have to get rid of Draco as a vassal? Had Draco done something wrong without knowing what it was? Draco didn't think so, not with his knowledge of pure-blood etiquette that Harry was relying so heavily on, but he had to admit that he didn't know as much about Lordship bonds as he did about the rest of it.   
  
"I was just thinking," Harry said quietly, "about how different you are from Blaise, and even some of the other members of the bond." He looked at Draco, and his face was shining with utter determination. "I was thinking how lucky I was to have you in my life."  
  
He reached forwards.  
  
Draco went with it, still half in a daze, still wondering if he would open his eyes and find Pansy pounding on the door and yelling at him to leave people alone so they could sleep. But instead, there was Harry in front of him, gazing at him with deep, clear eyes that had lost the troubled look Draco hated so much.  
  
Then he had Harry leaning in towards him.  
  
Then he had Harry kissing him.  
  
Draco gasped, and he thought the moment of shock produced deeper contact than either one of them had reckoned on, with their tongues colliding and a sensation like a hot needle sliding down his spine. Harry's hands rose, hovered, hesitated, and finally lowered so they could lodge themselves in Draco's hair. It was weird and strange and thrilling.  
  
And it was over, with Harry breaking back and gasping as though they'd just dueled each other for the Snitch instead of sharing a kiss. He eyed Draco cautiously, his tongue licking lips that Draco wanted to suck and taste.  
  
Draco tried out a smile. It seemed it  _was_ possible to smile like a normal person after all, even when he had lips that had just received a kiss from Harry Potter. "I hope that you didn't kiss me because you were thinking about kissing Blaise and you wanted to see how we would compare."  
  
And Harry laughed, vivid and unexpected and strange as the kiss, and leaned towards him, and whispered, "No. I was thinking that you resented me the way that Blaise did, and you had  _reason_  to resent me, but you still never tried to kill me." Draco opened his mouth to point out that that wasn't  _so_  high a standard to surpass, but Harry wasn't done. "And I realized how heartbroken I would be if you did turn against me. Why it was so much harder to deal with the way that you were yelling at me than it was to deal with Blaise's desire to be gone from the bond."  
  
Draco shifted, a little uneasily. He wondered how to put this, then decided that blunt would do pretty well. "You should know that Lords and vassals don't usually sleep together. It was considered too degrading, on the Lord's side--"  
  
"You could never degrade me."  
  
Draco flushed warmly under the praise, but continued anyway. "And like the vassal would get too much favoritism over other vassals, on that side."  
  
Harry paused thoughtfully. Then he said, "I don't think either Greg or Severus would mind. Pansy probably doesn't consider it any of her business. My main concern is whether the bond would make things too--unequal for you."   
  
Draco thought about that,  _made_ himself think about it, instead of just diving forwards and kissing Harry again the way he wanted to. Then he shook his head decisively. “I think that I’m doing what I should, by doing this. I know you could command me to sleep with you or leave you alone or whatever, but I also know that you’re never going to do it. I feel safe with you.”  
  
Harry bowed his head and closed his eyes. Draco held his breath for a second, wondering if Harry had  _hoped_ he wouldn’t say that. Was he regretting the kiss? Had he made a mistake, and he knew it now?  
  
But Harry shook his head and opened his eyes, and even before that, Draco could feel the tremble of warm resonances flowing from the bond. That prepared him for Harry’s smile, for the shine in his eyes as he reached out and caught Draco’s chin.  
  
“The only thing I regret at the moment is that I didn’t do this before,” Harry said. “I really like the idea of it, too. Shall we do it again?”  
  
And Draco could grin and comply, because in some things, where it really suited him to be, he was an obedient vassal.  
  
*  
  
“You know that not many people are sympathetic to Slytherins right now.”  
  
Pansy looked steadily into the eyes of the woman sitting across from her. “I know that,” she said. “But surely, in that case, we have a duty to make them see what they’re missing?”  
  
It took a moment, but Rita Skeeter smiled. “You’re right,” she said, and took out her quill. “What story are you going to tell?” Her large, careful eyes considered Pansy for a minute. “What story are  _we_ going to tell?”  
  
Pansy nodded, glad for the acknowledgment that they were going to do this together. That gave her more confidence than she might otherwise have had. “The story of the Slytherins who thought they could find shelter and protection in the same place that other people did,” she said. “Because even if the Death Eaters, or the Dark Lord himself, told them they were different from other people, stronger and somehow more worthy of respect, they didn’t think of themselves that way. They trusted in the promise of sanctuary that was held out in certain parts of Hogwarts, and were astonished to find they were wrong.”  
  
“Is vengeance on the specific people who denied them sanctuary important here?” Skeeter cocked her head to one side as if considering. She hadn’t written anything yet. “Because some of those people are war heroes, and it might be difficult to convince my audience that they did anything wrong.”  
  
Pansy sat up straight in her chair, inspired. “Of course not,” she said, and tried her best to look deeply shocked. “Of  _course_ not. Because what matters here is the larger, collective trend, and not the individual, isn’t it? The Dark Lord took advantage of the belief that pure-bloods in general were superior to try and put them on his side during the war. And now a lot of people who won are trying to come up with a new, convenient enemy to put in the place of the Dark Lord. Slytherins would be a good name to put on it—for them. It’s up to us to stop this dangerous trend and really put a face back on the people who nearly died during the war. To show that not all Slytherins are evil, and our society will tear itself apart if we try to focus on making them that way, the same way that we tore ourselves apart when we tried to say that all Muggleborns were evil.”  
  
No muscle moved in Skeeter’s face for a second. Pansy held her breath, wondering now if she should have framed it differently. Perhaps Skeeter herself held prejudices that Pansy didn’t know about, and Pansy had unwittingly stumbled into them.   
  
But a second later, Skeeter smiled, and her quill began to move rapidly over the parchment. “I can see that I’ll need to bring a Pensieve with me when I come over here,” she said coyly, “or get access to one later. Because the memory of your words would probably suffice if I was to simply write it down, without adding any other touches.”  
  
Pansy relaxed. That was as good an assurance as she was going to get, she thought, that her message would get out there completely unchanged in essentials.  
  
And if she could make Skeeter employed and Skeeter could make her famous…  
  
 _There’s really nothing in this partnership to dislike._  
  
*  
  
“Are you all right, my Lord?”  
  
Greg thought he was justified in asking. Lord Potter had come out of his latest talk with Draco with a dazed grin on his face. It made Greg a little afraid that Draco had maybe tried to use another love potion. Greg knew the bond wouldn’t allow that, but that was with him. He really only understood his part of the bond. Maybe it was different with Draco.  
  
Lord Potter, who was standing at the foot of the stairs as if he had forgotten they were there to go up, started and focused on him. “Yes, Greg, I am. Did you need something?”  
  
“Just to make sure you were all right,” said Greg, and when his Lord still blinked and acted like he didn’t know why, Greg decided he could be blunt. This wasn’t a Lord who would punish him for that, the way that some of them he had heard about in the past would. “Because you came out smiling like someone had tried to use a love potion on you.”  
  
Lord Potter laughed aloud at that, and Greg relaxed. He had seen some people under love potions in the last year, and he knew that no one who was laughed like that.  
  
“I can see why you would be worried, given what tends to happen around me,” Lord Potter said, and shook his head with what Greg thought was relaxation. “But I promise, that’s not the case here.” He paused, and Greg waited. He knew that kind of waiting. It meant that someone wanted to say something to him, but they weren’t sure how Greg would react. Draco had done that all the time when he wanted Greg and Vince to beat up someone for him but it was a lot of work.  
  
 _Poor Vince. I wish he lived and found a Lord he could serve._  
  
“How would you feel if Draco and I were to start dating?” Lord Potter asked. His eyes were fastened on Greg so suddenly that Greg thought he had missed the point when his Lord looked up. “You wouldn’t think it was wrong, would you?”  
  
Greg had to think about that, but mostly he was thinking about why Lord Potter would worry about what he thought. Lord Potter could date anyone he wanted, and Greg would approve. Unless that person tried to betray him or hurt him, of course, and then Greg would be right there to stop them. It was better than having Lord Potter sneak around all the time because he wanted to hide who he was dating from Greg.  
  
“No,” said Greg at last. He could think of only one reason that Lord Potter would ask him that. “Did Draco say that I would think it was?”  
  
“No,” said Lord Potter. “But I wonder—I’m Draco’s Lord, you know, and his legal guardian. It’s not really equal.”  
  
“You’re not going to be equal with most people,” said Greg. “So if you worry about that, you’ll never find anyone to date.”  
  
He was proud of himself for phrasing it that way, and for coming up with an argument that he thought Lord Potter would understand when he didn’t think about Lordship bonds and being pure-blood the way Greg did. Instead, though, that just made Lord Potter stare at him some more. “But I’m not most people’s Lord.”  
  
“But you saved the world,” said Greg. “And they didn’t.”  
  
Lord Potter hesitated as if he hadn’t considered that. Greg watched him, shaking his head. He had to admit, although he really liked Lord Potter and he would always serve him loyally, some things about him were just  _weird._ If Greg had saved the world, it would be the first thing he would think about when he woke up in the morning.  
  
“That’s true,” said Lord Potter at last. “But that’s only one difference between me and most people. Draco and I have two.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” said Greg. He knew that Lord Potter wouldn’t despise him for admitting that the way the Dark Lord had when Greg said he didn’t understand spells. “Do you want me to dislike your relationship with Draco?”  
  
“No,” said Lord Potter. “I just think that it might be a mistake to enter into one while I’m his Lord and he’s my ward.”  
  
Greg shrugged. “I don’t think it is, but you can ask Pansy and Professor Snape. I think they would tell you if it was really a mistake.”  
  
For some reason, that made Lord Potter break out into a bright grin. “You’re right,” he said. “I think I’ll ask Professor Snape, since Pansy is busy right now. Thanks again, Greg.” He nodded to him and sprinted up the stairs.  
  
Greg watched him go, then shrugged again. It seemed that Lord Potter really did want someone to yell at him for dating Draco. Greg thought that was strange, but Lord Potter fought for things and loved things and wanted things that were all strange to him. This probably wasn’t any stranger.  
  
*  
  
“So. Can you tell me if you think it’s right?”  
  
“I notice,” said Severus slowly, “that you don’t ask if it’s  _wise_.”  
  
Harry snorted. “I want to know if it’s right, the way that it was right to ignore Blaise’s plea to become a part of the bond again. But there, I had some knowledge. I had this horrible feeling about what would happen if I let him become my vassal again. This time, I only have my own feelings, and they aren’t always reliable.” He fixed Severus with an intense stare. “So, what do you think?”  
  
Severus looked off to the side. He didn’t know how to express his discomfort with the idea of being asked for advice about dating one of his Slytherins—and the one he had been sworn to protect, no less—from a Gryffindor.  
  
A Lord. And someone who Severus could not imagine seeking to abuse the position of power he had over Draco.  
  
But even that did not necessarily make it right.  
  
Severus turned to back to Harry. “Could you wait?” he asked. “Until Draco is no longer legally a child?”  
  
“Would even that make it right?” Harry’s eyes were steady. “What would happen if we waited, and then he didn’t want to leave the bond, so he was still my vassal? Should I deny him for as long as we’re in an unequal bond?”  
  
Severus frowned. “What would be Draco’s response?”  
  
“He wouldn’t like it.”  
  
Severus had to snort at the sheer understatement of that. “Neither would he like it if he found out that you had come to me for advice. He would expect you to know whether it was right or not. Or perhaps he would not even care,” Severus had to add. Draco was still impulsive in some ways, although that was a bit restrained since his trial and punishment. The idea that he would have to wait for Harry for five years under house arrest, when for four of those years Harry would have a freedom to move about that he did not, would increase his resentment to the point that he might lash out again.  
  
“I don’t want to date him just to avoid trouble with him,” Harry said, probably picking up on some of Severus’s anxieties through the bond. “I want to date him because I  _like_ him. And I understand him. And he listened to some of the things that happened to me, and he didn’t make fun of them. He—he had a hard time adjusting to the bond, at first. He’s never going to be Pansy or Greg. I can’t make him a good friend and political adviser from scratch, or the perfect vassal. But he’s given me good advice now, and, well. I like him.”  
  
Severus was still, thinking. At last he said, “This is temporary advice only, you understand. Draco would not like it if you refrained from dating him, but that alone is not enough reason to do so.”  
  
Harry didn’t point out that  _he_ had said that already, which Severus thought he might. He only nodded and sat there, with his eyes fastened on Severus’s face.  
  
Severus grimaced. For all the times that he had wished Harry would listen to his advice when he was still the Boy-Who-Lived and Severus still in charge of shepherding him through the war, the actual  _experience_ of being looked to for advice was oddly uncomfortable. “You must be careful. Much more careful than someone would be who is dating their equal. Conscious of the things that might disturb the bond between you and Draco. And I am not talking about the Lordship bond.”  
  
“I know.” Harry swallowed. “But at least the Lordship bond is going to give me one advantage, to know if I’m distressing Draco too much by something I’m doing.”  
  
“And he can read your emotions as well, if he cares to make the effort,” said Severus. “The matter of your legal guardianship of him is more difficult.”  
  
Harry waited. Severus yielded and sighed. “That does not make it impossible,” he said. “It only means that you must be—” He struggled for a second. “So careful, so delicate, that it might be easier not to do it.”  
  
“My main fear is what that would do to Draco,” Harry said softly. “For the next year or so, he’s going to spend a lot of time around us. But then the rest of us will be free to spend more time outside the house, and he’ll be here for another four. What kind of opportunity will he have to form a connection with anyone else? And even when he becomes a legal adult, there’s no saying that he’ll be able to move around through the ranks of wizarding society and choose anyone he wants.”  
  
“That would be true no matter what,” said Severus, a little sharply. “They would also have to want  _him_.”  
  
“The way I do.”  
  
Severus settled back in his chair. “There are things to be said against that,” he said. “What they are, I have already told you. But it sounds as though you have made up your mind to do what you wish anyway, no matter what I might tell you.”  
  
“No, I do value it,” Harry said, standing up and holding out one hand as if he thought Severus might bolt from the room in childish offense. Severus simply raised his eyebrows, and Harry blushed a little and sat back down. “I mean, I wanted to hear what you would say. If you’d said that you thought it was impossible and I would only hurt Draco, then I would have tried to find some way to let him down gently.”  
  
“In spite of the sense of rejection that would cause?” Severus had to ask.  
  
“Even then.” Harry nodded. “But I think you’re right, and it can work if I’m careful. I know that I don’t want to command him to do anything against his will, and he can sense my emotions, too, so at least we could avoid arguments where I was the only one who would know what he was feeling. And the legal guardianship part…” He shrugged a little. “So far, I’ve left all the parts about where he goes and what he does and what he’s supposed to learn up to Auror Stone, and she’s been pleased to take them on. I don’t think that she’ll mind if I give her everything but the name in the guardianship, and only retain the bond.”  
  
“If someone from the Wizengamot investigates…”  
  
“How?” Harry grinned a little, with sharp teeth. “Not even Wizengamot members can visit without advance Auror notice. That was something Auror Stone was very careful to insist on. And I trust Stone to know the right way to answer impertinent questions.”  
  
“That much is true,” Severus said. “But you came to me for my role of prudent adviser, and that is what I am being. I would be remiss if I did not let you know all the ways this could go wrong.”  
  
“I know,” Harry said quietly. “But I think what we have to fear most is a bad breakup, where Draco and I are still related to each other as Lord and vassal.” He took a deep breath. “In that case, we would probably have to ask Auror Stone to let Draco live with her, and I would release the bond if that was what he wanted.”  
  
Severus frowned. “But you do not know if he would want that, even if your relationship does end. Perhaps a modification of the bond, the way that you prepared with me…”  
  
“Yeah, that would be a possibility, too.” Harry rose to his feet, his face full of determination. “It’s like you said. I just need to be really careful and cautious, and conscious of all the things that are going on all the time.”  
  
“It does not sound relaxing,” Severus remarked, in spite of himself.  
  
“And you think I would know what to do with a relaxing life if I had one?” Harry demanded.  
  
Severus nodded in return and leaned back, letting Harry step out the door. He supposed that in some ways this was a natural outcome of Harry and Draco spending so much time together. He hoped that it would work out. He feared that it would not.  
  
But as that was the nature of so many of his experiences since the war had begun, there was no reason to think that this one would prove the only negative one.  
  
Severus snorted, and turned back to the process of composing a reply to Zabini’s letter. So far, he had not found the right sort of language that would be scathing when someone read the letter with knowledge of him in mind, but innocent to a casual glance. He was enjoying the exercise, however.  
  
*  
  
Harry came to a stop outside Severus’s room and tilted his head back, dragging in long gulps of sweet-tasting air. Of course, he knew this air was really no different than the rest of the house, but at least he had some kind of approval now, and advice, about how to go ahead with his relationship with Draco.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
He blinked and looked down the stairs. Draco stood at the bottom of them, biting his lip. Harry leaped down towards him, but Draco didn’t look any less uncertain, just shaking his head as though he was stunned. Harry reached out and took his hands. “What is it?” he asked.  
  
“It’s just—you were in there with Professor Snape for a long time, and I could feel all these waves of emotion,” said Draco softly, staring at him. “Uncertainty, and anger, and then this warmth that I don’t understand. Did he tell you—I mean, did he think that a Lord shouldn’t date a vassal?”  
  
Harry dragged Draco closer. He supposed the bond wasn’t a guarantee of anything. They could feel each other’s emotions, but not the cause of them. They would still have to talk to each other about where those emotions came from and smooth out misunderstandings.  
  
Harry was looking forward to it.  
  
“No,” he said softly, and leaned in to kiss Draco on the corner of his mouth. “I  _was_ talking to Severus about the ethics of it, but I still want to—to be close to you, Draco.” Maybe it was a little odd to use the word “dating” when they were confined to the same house. “Just, I want to be comfortable that I don’t influence you too much with the bond, and I think it would be best to hand over most of your legal guardianship to Auror Stone. That way, I’m not involved in things like punishing you.”  
  
Draco’s smile was a long and soft and lovely thing. “I think she would agree to that,” he said. “I know I would.” His hands slowly uncurled and settled on Harry’s shoulders. “And I want to be with you, too.”  
  
This was Draco the insecure, Draco the exasperating, Draco who Harry had struggled the most with of any vassal except Blaise. But he was also Draco the trusting, and the sharp challenge at the back of his eyes, only made worse by his uncertainty, was the sort that Harry had spent his life enjoying and resisting and coming back to.  
  
Their kiss, this time, was soft enough not to bruise, but more than deep enough to make a promise.  
  
 **The End.**  
  
This is the last chapter of  _The Only True Lords,_ although I may post one-shot sequels from time to time. If so, I’ll also post them on this site.


End file.
